Northrop Grumman awarded $95M OBIM contract

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a 42-month, $95 million contract by the DHS Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) to develop the first two stages of the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) system. Northrop will serve as systems developer and integrator.

HART is the organization’s next-generation biometric identification services system, replacing the IDENT system which was originally developed in 1994. IDENT is currently the DHS-wide system for the storage and processing of biometric and limited biographic information for DHS national security, law enforcement, immigration, intelligence and other DHS mission-related functions.

HART is a more robust system than its predecessor and when fully implemented will perform multi-modal processing and matching using a combination of face, finger and iris biometrics meeting DHS accuracy requirements. According to the announcement, a focus on safeguarding personally identifiable information as well as ensuring the critical sharing of data across interagency partners underpins the technology.

Using HART’s scalable architecture, the technology will allow for vastly increased transaction volumes, new modalities and mission growth.

“Northrop Grumman is proud to support the DHS in taking this critical biometric identity technology to the next level,” said Bobby Lentz, vice president, global cyber solutions, cyber and intelligence mission solutions division, Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. “As threats continue to evolve, HART will offer a more accurate, robust way to identify adversaries in a secure, affordable manner that scales to future needs and ensures interagency data sharing. We’re applying advanced, proven technologies to deliver a system that performs well into the future and is poised to grow to meet tomorrow’s homeland security needs.”

When the RFP for this contract was issued last year, Mark Crego, the former chief architect of DHS’s biometric ID system and a partner at Identity Strategy Partners, issued a statement supporting the modernization of biometric identity management technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  DHS  |  facial recognition  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  iris recognition  |  Northrop Grumman  |  OBIM