TSA Awards K4 Solutions $8M for Continued Support of Contact Center
The Transportation Security Administration has awarded K4 Solutions, Inc., a potential $7.8 million bridge contract for continued operation and maintenance of the agency’s primary incoming portal for receiving inquiries from employees, the public, industry, and other government organizations. The TSA Contact Center responds to a wide range of inquiries such as passenger complaints regarding security screening, questions about security procedures, questions about agency programs and policy, and more. The base award is for six months and there are two three-month options. The period of performance shall not exceed Aug. 1, 2019. The bridge contract will provide time for the new contractor, System Integration, Inc., to begin performance.
IARPA Awards Signature Science $2M for Novel Forensic ID Methods
Signature Science, LLC, says it has received a $2.3 million contract from the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) for the development of a new method for human forensic analysis based on protein sequence, which requires little or no DNA in the samples. Signature Science, which is a subsidiary of Southwest Research Institute, says the Proteo-ID methodology aims to accurately identify people via protein sequencing from human skin cell samples. The company says that DNA sequence analysis is the predominant method for human identification but that DNA can naturally degrade in the environment or be absent altogether, making proteins then an ideal matrix for forensic analysis. Signature Science is teamed with researchers from the Univ. of North Texas Health Science Center and The Ohio State Univ. on the project.
Stratovan to Continue Developing Vendor-Neutral ATR Software for TSA
The Transportation Security Administration says it plans to award a contract to Stratovan Corp. for the company to continue development of vendor-neutral automated threat recognition (ATR) software. The agency says the contract will address the requirements to update the previously developed software development kit (SDK) to the new DICOS 2.0A standard. The adapted version of the SDK will provide the tools for third-party development and will expand the detection capability of the algorithm, TSA said.