The nation’s premier program to filter incoming foreign nationals through a biometric database and to track their departure is headed for an overhaul during the next two years as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to boost the capabilities of the US-VISIT program, Bob Mocny, director of US-VISIT recently said.
The aim of the US-VISIT 1.0 effort is to “reengineer and integrate the architecture and functionality while addressing gaps in availability, flexibility, scalability and affordability of IDENT (Automated Biometric Identification System) and ADIS (Arrival and Departure Information System),” DHS says in its budget documents as part of the fiscal year 2012 funding request for US-VISIT.
Mocny said on Tuesday that it’s “somewhat of a misnomer” to call US-VISIT a system as it currently stands. There is an operational system but more is needed “and right now we can’t have what we want,” he said at AFCEA’s annual homeland security conference.
For example, the IDENT biometric database and fingerprint matching system can accommodate 5 million searches in less than six seconds, Mocny said.
“We need to do 500 million searches in sub six seconds, not just fingerprint but iris and face recognition and other modalities,” Mocny said.
US-VISIT was developed and deployed by prime contractor Accenture [ACN]. DHS is seeking $302.3 million for the program in FY ’12, about $71.5 million less than FY ’11.
Mocny said that this year and next DHS will be issuing Requests for Information and Requests for Proposals as well has hosting industry days to explore how to improve the capabilities of US-VISIT.
The IDENT portion of US-VISIT includes over 120 million fingerprint records of legitimate travelers to the United States, immigration-benefit seekers, and immigration violators. When foreign nationals seek visas for travel to the United States or when migrants are interdicted trying to come into the country illegally, their fingerprints are checked against IDENT to see if they are legitimate travelers or possibly wanted as criminals or identified as a possible terrorist.
ADIS contains textual information to track arrivals, departures and current immigration status about non-citizens.
While IDENT is fingerprint based, Mocny said that DHS is moving into iris, face recognition exploring other modalities for US-VISIT.
Program goals and priorities for 2011 include exploring the fusion of biometrics, including fingerprints, iris and face, and review lessons from various testing prototypes to defined the future technology architecture for US-VISIT 1.0.