Lance Cpl. Kesley Farmer, rifleman, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, utilizes a Biometric Enrollment and Screening Device during a mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 15, 2014. The company operated in Larr Village for two days to establish a presence and to disrupt enemy fighters. Throughout the mission the infantrymen conducted several patrols within the village and discovered hazardous materials which could be used to create improvised explosive devices. Photo: CPL Joseph Scanlan
By Calvin Biesecker |
9 years ago |
02/04/2015

The Program Manager for Defense Department Biometrics has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to survey contractors that can provide sustainment and service life extension capabilities for the department’s authoritative biometric repository, the DoD ABIS.

Lance Cpl. Kesley Farmer, rifleman, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, utilizes a Biometric Enrollment and Screening Device during a mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 15, 2014. The company operated in Larr Village for two days to establish a presence and to disrupt enemy fighters. Throughout the mission the infantrymen conducted several patrols within the village and discovered hazardous materials which could be used to create improvised explosive devices. Photo: CPL Joseph Scanlan
Lance Cpl. Kesley Farmer, rifleman, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, utilizes a Biometric Enrollment and Screening Device during a mission in Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 15, 2014. The company operated in Larr Village for two days to establish a presence and to disrupt enemy fighters. Throughout the mission the infantrymen conducted several patrols within the village and discovered hazardous materials which could be used to create improvised explosive devices. Photo: CPL Joseph Scanlan

The Product Manager Biometrics Enabling Capability, which is within the Program Manager for DoD Biometrics shop, “is seeking a system integrator capable of providing software and hardware sustainment, maintenance and modifications to the DoD ABIS as requirements and technology dictate, and enabling the system to meet performance outcomes,” the Jan. 29 RFI, says. It adds that “The scope of the service life extension effort will include, but not be limited to, management of software and hardware obsolescence, namely obsolescence-driven update or replacement of the multi-modal search core software solution, the Oracle 11g database solution, and the application of Windows Server 2008.”

The planned contract is for five years, including a base year and four one-year options. Northrop Grumman [NOC] developed the current ABIS system for DoD and remains the prime contractor.

Col. Sandy Vann-Oleasz, the PM DoD Biometrics, told Defense Daily last August that given resource constraints, the Army would take the lowest risk strategy and had begun plans to extend the life of ABIS (Defense Daily, Aug. 7, 2014).

An upgraded version of ABIS, ABIS 1.2, was deployed last fall. ABIS 1.2 has more storage capacity, higher throughput for search queries, increased accuracy, improved search algorithms, and continuous watchlist availability.

The database ingests, stores, processes, matches, and manages over 12 million biometrics records in support of military and homeland security missions.

The database is multimodal, although fingerprints make up the largest biometric records. France’s Safran Group’s MorphoTrust business unit provides the search matching algorithms.