Feds and state government put money into biometric expansion projects

Two American government biometrics contracts, one federal and one state, were announced this week.

The more significant of the two is a $618 million federal modernization task order that involves biometric systems. In the second contract, identity authentication vendor Idemia Identity & Security North America signed a six-year contract to support enrollment services offered by the state of Indiana.

Accenture Federal Services won the federal government’s seven-year order, updating and expanding systems used by the U.S. Marshals Service.

The Marshals‘ office, a law enforcement agency attached to the federal courts system, is expanding the capabilities of its biometric, analytical, geospatial and cloud systems. It also wants to raise the bar on its development of mobile apps.

Neither the government nor Accenture would disclose more details on the large contract.

In 2018, Accenture published marketing material featuring the Marshals Service’s CIO in which the bureau was portrayed as wanting to do more with biometrics, including fingerprint and retina scans. Facial recognition is mentioned as a longer-term goal.

Accenture has done at least a decade of related work with Washington.

In 2017, the company signed a five-year, $232 million contract to launch enterprise and mobile systems for the U.S. Marshals Service. That modernization deal also was light on details. Its goal was to automate office processes and free officers to do more policing.

Ten years ago, Accenture won a $71 million contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to support an immigration-focused biometric and biographic ID management system.

Moving into the heartland, Idemia I&S North America is boasting of a six-year contract with optional two-year extensions in Indiana. The deal extends existing ID authentication work with the state going back to 2009, and includes capture capabilities and a back-end processing system for fingerprint biometrics.

Idemia claims to support State Police and all state user agencies. The extension includes upgrades to the government’s appointment registration, live-scan and backend systems.

The deal’s value was not released.

Article Topics

Accenture  |  biometric enrollment  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint recognition  |  government purchasing  |  Idemia North America  |  law enforcement