Delaware triples locations for Idemia’s biometric background checks

Delaware State Police have chosen Idemia to provide a way for members of the public to carry out in-person or online identity verification with fingerprint biometrics to enable trusted transactions.

The background check service will use Idemia’s IdentoGO to automate biometric scanning and processing by the Delaware State Police (DSP) State Bureau of Identification (SBI).

The program offers a web portal and call center through which people can schedule biometrics enrollment and securely check the status of their application.

“Every educator, school staff member, school volunteer and childcare professional must pass a background check before they begin work in our schools and childcare programs,” says Dr. Mark Holodick, Delaware’s secretary of education. “Delaware State Police have long performed this vital work. This advancement will make it more convenient for future employees and volunteers to complete this check and help us more quickly get needed personnel into our schools and childcares to support our learners.”

Delaware is increasing the number of enrollment centers it operates from three to nine, all branded “IdentoGO” and staffed by professionals trained and managed by Idemia. Non-residents and customers unable to visit a Delaware fingerprinting location can select from among additional options, including fingerprint enrollment locations across the U.S.

The contract follows an announcement earlier this year of multi-year contracts to deploy IdentoGO in West Virginia, Texas and South Carolina. The deal with Delaware was also previewed at that time.

Idemia claims latent print accuracy advantage

Checks against criminal databases rely on the accuracy of latent print matching, and Idemia is also touting the performance of its algorithms in the Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies (ELFT) by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

ELFT benchmark tests evaluate the accuracy of algorithms at matching latent fingerprints and palm prints found at crime scenes.

Idemia says its results, originally published last year and updated earlier this year, show two to five times less errors than algorithms from the company’s competitors.

“We are particularly proud of the results of these complementary tests,” says Jean-Christophe Fondeur, Idemia CTO. “They illustrate Idemia’s ability to be consistently a leader offering the most accurate algorithms on both fingerprint and palm datasets. This is in line with our long-standing and ongoing pledge to provide law enforcement agencies with the very best systems on the market in their critical mission.”

Article Topics

background checks  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  IDEMIA  |  Idemia Public Security  |  NIST