TAMPA, Fla.–The office that performs biometric matching services for the entire Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is close to issuing a draft Request for Proposals (RFP) and hosting an industry day related to the acquisition of a replacement system to its 20-year-old fingerprint database called IDENT.
The Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) also has a program manager in place for the acquisition of the replacement biometric system, which officially is being called the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) system that will succeed IDENT, Shonnie Lyon, director of OBIM, says in September at the Global Identity Summit presented by AFCEA.
Release of the draft RFP is expected within the “very near future,” Lyon says, although OBIM is waiting on Congress to approve the FY ’16 budget request. The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution through early December. House and Senate appropriators in their respective markups of the FY ’16 budget have approved $65.8 million in funding as requested for OBIM to begin the first increments of the HART system.
“Once an FY ’16 budget is passed, and if funds have been allocated for the new system, the current plan is to proceed for approval within the department’s acquisition process and prepare to solicit proposals from industry,” a spokesman for OBIM tells HSR.
Currently OBIM uses several contractors for support. Science Applications International Corp. [SAIC] provides systems engineering support, CSC [CSC] operations and maintenance, and VariQ system improvement.
Unlike IDENT, which is strictly used for fingerprint matching, the plan is for the HART system to be multimodal, with fingerprints, face and iris image storing and matching as the core biometrics. In addition to being able to store far more records and conduct more transactions more quickly than IDENT, the HART system will also be scalable to accommodate growth and additional biometrics if the demand arises.
Paul Hunter, chief of Biometrics Strategy at the DHS United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, says at the conference he’s interested in using voice recognition technology.
IDENT contains nearly 200 million biometric identities, and processes more than 300,000 transactions and verifies about 7,000 derogatory matches daily.
One of the components driving demand for additional modalities with HART is Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in particular it’s Office of Entry Exit Transformation (EXT). The office is charged with developing and implementing a biometric exit solution for foreign nationals departing the United States, with the initial focus on airline departures.
A biometric exit solution would complement the existing fingerprint checks that are currently done when foreign nationals arrive in the United States. The purpose of a biometric exit solution is to help increase the confidence of CBP that someone has left the country.
Kim Mills, director of the EXT Office, tells HSR that her office is pushing to add face and iris for inclusion in a future biometric matching system. The EXT office this year did a face recognition pilot test at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., and hopes to do a similar pilot elsewhere once Congress and the Obama administration agree on an FY ’16 budget. In November the EXT Office is planning to begin a pilot test of face and iris recognition technology of people entering and exiting the country at a pedestrian crossing in San Diego.
The EXT Office has also begun testing a handheld fingerprint sensing system to record the departure of some foreign nationals from U.S. airports. This pilot, called Biometric Exit Mobile, is proving that the technology works for exit applications, says John Wagner, deputy Assistant Commissioner of CBP’s Office of Field Operations.
In addition to CBP’s use of biometric technologies at ports of entry, the agency’s Border Patrol captures fingerprints of illegal migrants between the ports of entry to help with identification. The Coast Guard also does fingerprint capture and matching on board some of its vessels that do migrant interdiction and other DHS components are using biometrics for various purposes.
Hunter of USCIS says fingerprints are used by his agency in producing immigration documents and as part of the adjudication process for immigrant benefits.
The use of biometrics by DHS is “exploding,” Patrick Nemeth, identity operations director of OBIM, tells conference attendees.
Biometrics Framework
DHS recently published a strategic framework for biometrics through 2025. The document lays out some of the vision, goals and objectives for DHS, including the need to refresh outdated biometric collection systems. In the next month or so, DHS expects to publish an overarching biometrics strategy document for the department to provide clearer direction of where DHS is going with biometrics in the next few years, says Steve Yonkers, director of Screening and Vetting Strategy and Investments at DHS.
To make sure that the various strategy documents don’t become “shelfware,” DHS officials say there needs to money behind biometric needs in future budgets.
The expected funding for the HART system in FY ’16 is a step in the right direction for supporting biometrics but there are other needs as well, Mike Hardin, deputy director of the EXT Office, tells HSR. He says most of the fingerprint scanners used by CBP officers to help process foreign nationals entering the country need to be replaced with upgraded equipment, adding that so do the camera systems these officers use to help document these arrivals.
The use of biometrics by CBP and the transfer to that agency in 2013 of a portion of the former US-VISIT entry-exit program has aided in the intelligence analysis of certain people, Colleen Manaher, executive director of Planning, Program Analysis, and Evaluation at CBP’s Office of Field Operations, says during a panel discussion here. She also tells HSR that the fusing of the biometric data her agency collects with biographic information CBP has collected from foreign visitors for years has helped with the targeting of certain people for national security purposes.
For example, she says, if someone has used multiple aliases, it may have been unclear previously if those aliases belonged to multiple people. By collecting and using the biometrics for intelligence, CBP may now connect an individual to the various names that person has provided in the past.
The fusion of the biographic and biometric data “is amazing,” she says during the panel talk, adding that “we need to harness this.”