Unisys [UIS] says it has received a $32 million, contract from Mexico’s Mnistry of Internal Affairs to create and manage a citizen identification database based on fingerprint, iris and facial biometric data for up to 110 million people. The database would be part of the country’s national ID card project. The overall contract is worth $50 million over three years and was awarded to a consortium comprised of Unisys and AXTEL, a Mexican communications company. The value to Unisys is $32 million. Unisys will integrate the solution, provide the information technology infrastructure and manage the data center hosting solution. AXTEL will provide communications services as well as the data center facility and service operations center. Unisys says its identity solution will be based on its Library of eID Artifacts software framework, which creates building blocks for identity and credentialing solutions to accelerate development and reduce implementation time. The contract is just one of three that Mexico has either awarded or plans to for its ID project. The biometric enrollment technology for the program is being provided under recent award to a team of Smartmatic and Cross Match Technologies (TR2, Jan. 20). Mexico is still expected to open a tender for bids for the citizen ID card production and issuance.