Despite its recent win to provide the FBI with latest fingerprint matching software as part of the agency’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) program, MorphoTrak sees a wide range of opportunities emerging at the state and local level for civil applications of identity management solutions that will drive future growth, says the company’s chief.
The civil identity solutions market represents MorphoTrak’s third largest business segment but is gaining steam and could overtake its federal business in the coming years, Daniel Vassy, the company’s CEO, tells TR2.
MorphoTrak’s parent organization, Sagem Securite, which is part of France’s SAFRAN Group, is the global leader in comprehensive civil identity management solutions but not so in the U.S.
“That’s one gap that we’re going to address,” Vassy says.
The civil identity solutions market is at the state and local level and excludes law enforcement, Vassy says. The company does have business here, in particular related to healthcare for medical document management, validation and issuance. The driver’s license market, which is dominated by L-1 Identity Solutions [ID], is just a facet of this growing civil identification market, he says.
As for the burgeoning civil identification market, Vassy says anything requiring background checks, the issuance of permits and credentials, is open for comprehensive identity management solutions.
“They all need some sort of scheme to make the control and issuance and the security of that greater and less fragmented,” he says.
Vassy is bullish on the identity management space overall. MorphoTrak’s largest market is serving law enforcement agencies at the state and local level, primarily with its Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) software used to match newly captured and latent fingerprints against a database. Here the company does business with 28 states plus various local agencies.
However, this is a mature market where MorphoTrak and its competitors have competed for years. The growth in this market is coming from replacements for new and better AFIS systems as well as biometric such as livescan devices, mobile AFIS solutions, and additional features, Vassy says.
MorphoTrak’s second largest business segment is the federal market. Here the company has been engaged in the FBI’s precursor system to NGI, the Integrated AFIS, for over 10 years. The potential contract value for NGI wasn’t disclosed.
The portion of NGI won by MorphoTrak is to provide a matching capability using 10 fingerprints, which increases the accuracy of a match. After a series of trade studies conducted by Lockheed Martin [LMT], which is the prime contractor for NGI, MorphoTrak was awarded the contract over Cogent Systems [COGT], Japan’s NEC and L-1.
An important feature to MorphoTrak’s NGI offering is the fusing of different algorithms that increase the likelihood of matches, Vassy says. MorphoTrak’s partner on the NGI effort is BIO-key International [BKYI], which is also supplying algorithms as part of the solution.
The FBI has said it hopes to have the initial NGI fingerprint capability operating by late 2010 (TR2, Feb. 18). Eventually the FBI plans to add more biometrics to NGI such as latent prints, facial and iris recognition, areas where MorphoTrak intends to compete.
The company is also eyeing other opportunities in the federal space, in particular border control, transport security and defense. In the area of border control MorphoTrak sees opportunities on the U.S. VISIT entry exit program, Customs and Border Protection and the State Department with visa issuance.
In the transportation arena MorphoTrak is supplying reader technology to the Port of Brownsville in Texas under the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Transportation Worker Identification Credential program. Vassy also believes that TSA is increasingly interested in identity management solutions related to airport security, pointing to the crewPASS program for screening flight deck crew members that the agency is expediting. He also says that the Federal Aviation Administration has work for identity solutions.
These opportunities in the federal space are “only the tip of the iceberg,” Vassy says. “The initiatives are going to be much larger than that.”
MorphoTrak is also pursuing opportunities with the Defense Department and is active with several partners on the Biometrics Operations Support Services-Unrestricted program, a potential $500 million multi-award effort to 12 companies (TR2, Jan. 7). However, Vassy says that the Pentagon hasn’t done much with the program is still defining it.