Home Office revises FABrIC tender

The Home Office announced earlier this week that its pre-tender notice for continuity of biometric service to support IDENT1 did not mention the Police ICT Company that was launched to lead technology procurement for UK forces, according to a report by Government Computing.

At a market briefing event intended for all vendors seeking to temporarily oversee a forensic and biometric interim capability service (FABrIC), the Home Office listed the requirements for a supplier to operate and maintain FABrIC until a replacement solution was fully adopted.

An updated pre-tender notice for the contract, valued somewhere between £17 million and £77.4 million, is designed to ensure the continued services for biometric identification and scenes of crime forensic case management capability.

The contract’s initial term is for two years, with the option of extending the service by two twelve month periods.

“[The Home Office] seeks to provision continuity of the operational life of the capability, known as FABrIC until the Home Office Biometrics Programme delivers a longer term solution to replace both FABrIC and the immigration and asylum fingerprint system (IABS),” the tender said.

IDENT1 is the UK’s central national database for holding, searching and comparing biometric data on all individuals arrested by the police. As a crucial component of UK policing, along with border security and crime prevention operations, IDENT1 serves some 30,000 users that are connected to both national and local police systems.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  biometrics  |  police  |  tender  |  UK