President Donald Trump earlier this month signed an FY ’17 budget bill that Congress sent him that provides $235.5 million to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office that manages the department’s authoritative biometric database, $11.6 million below the requested amount due to delays in the program for a new database and contract savings.
The omnibus appropriations act also fences $20 million of the funds for the Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) until DHS provides congressional appropriators on how the office “is addressing stakeholder concerns regarding requirements and priorities.” Specifically, the omnibus bill wants OBIM to provide “a plan to accelerate the multi-modal biometric capabilities of HART Increment 2.”
OBIM currently manages the IDENT biometric storing and matching system that is largely based on fingerprints although the office is beginning to add more face and iris images to the repository. The system has limited capabilities when it comes to face and iris matching.
OBIM is also in the process of acquiring a replacement to IDENT, the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) system and is expected to select a prime contractor for the new database and matching system in June. OBIM is considering bids from CSRA [CSRA], Leidos [LDOS] and Northrop Grumman [NOC]. The omnibus act includes $52.8 million to begin the HART acquisition.
In February, DHS released the Request for Proposal for HART, months later than planned. The planned award for HART will include Increments 1 and 2. In the first increment, OBIM is seeking fingerprint matching capabilities and analysis, as well as latent fingering management and analysis. The existing Multimodal Bridge Solution face and iris matching subsystem will also continue to operate as part of HART in Increment 1.
Gemalto currently supplies the fingerprint matching capabilities for the IDENT system and NEC Corp. the face and iris matching subsystem.
In Increment 2 the contractor will build on the business processing workflows implemented in the core application in the first increment. The second increment, as it currently stands, will also implement the multimodal matching capabilities through full scale iris and facial image matching and a biometric fusion capability.
DHS last year proposed transferring OBIM from the National Protection and Programs Directorate to Customs and Border Protection. Congress denied that request.