DHS to award sole source contract for NEC face biometrics software licenses

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) has announced that it intends to procure face biometrics software licenses from NEC National Security Systems, Inc. (NEC NSS) on a sole source basis for an undisclosed amount. The contract is to maintain existing perpetual licenses for NEC’s enterprise-wide software for Advanced Identity Manager and Advanced Identity Matcher-Edge Source products and assessment tools.

In making the announcement, DHS also disclosed new details about its biometric activities.

DHS said the procurement is for maintenance of software for which the government already owns a perpetual-use license. OBIM is only seeking to procure the maintenance of the current customized facial license software and not new perpetual licenses.

DHS said, “only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.”

“The NEC Advanced Identity Manager software maintenance is essential to the continued proper functioning of the NEC NSS AIM software, which DHS uses to perform its essential tasks of biometric identification in support of screening, vetting, and credentialing of individuals seeking immigration benefits, employment, or entry/exit to the United States,” the department said.

DHS said the NEC “software itself is customized, with the algorithm having been developed and fine-tuned by NEC NSS over the years to where only NEC NSS can provide the maintenance for such an application. If the government were not able to procure the necessary annual software maintenance, the system would be at risk for potential security vulnerabilities and system malfunctions.”

“These systems will naturally experience degradation in system performance, negatively impacting the ability to make operational decisions such as, but not limited to, national security and public safety, identifying known or suspected terrorists, supporting enforcement actions, granting, or denying benefits such as immigration benefits or trusted traveler status for OBIM, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Administration, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services who are currently using the NEC product,” DHS explained.

OBIM procured perpetual licenses for facial matching capabilities to perform biometric identification in support of screening, vetting, and credentialing of individuals seeking immigration benefits, employment, or entry/exit to the United States.

“A DHS wide license enables continuity of efforts across multiple system implementations and allow for cost savings associated with future implementations,” the department said. “As a result, if OBIM were not able to procure the annual maintenance for the NEC Face Enterprise-wide Software, at a minimum, each component would need to separately procure that annual maintenance support from NEC at a cost of $8 million per DHS component, for a total of $40 million for a one-year period of performance as compared to OBIM procuring the annual maintenance support from NEC on behalf of the entire department for a cost of $8 million over a one-year period of performance.”

“The use of other products would result in interoperability, compatibility, interface issues that would preclude the system’s support team from providing efficient and effective customer support,” DHS said.

DHS also stated that “there are many steps that must occur before any new technology can be utilized. One critical step is to test new products in a laboratory environment before implementing in a production environment. It is overly unrealistic to suggest that adding a new cloud instance of a product would be close to providing a completely operational product in a DHS production environment. If OBIM were to replace the NEC Face Enterprise-wide Software without the minimum critical step of testing in a non-production environment, it would be new development and OBIM would have to contract for the entire lifecycle of the work to install, build, integrate, test, and compute face matching templates for the new system. The templates regeneration alone previously took six months when OBIM transitioned to the NEC software.”

“Without extensive testing,” DHS said, “it is impossible to determine if other products could replace the current customized facial license software. OBIM would need to conduct a series of first article testing to determine if the accuracy of the vendor’s facial license software will achieve the same level of accuracy OBIM currently has with its current customized and fine-tuned matcher. First article testing is imperative to understand the accuracy of the product, specific to OBIM data.  The risk in executing a new facial license product without proper testing before going ‘live’ would cause nationwide catastrophic delays to stakeholder operations.  Any drop in accuracy would result in OBIM not being able to perform its mission to DHS internal and external stakeholders.”

DHS said “a decrease in accuracy would result in an increased workload on the Biometric Support Center human resources, resulting in missed Service Level Agreements with OBIM stakeholders. For example, a 1.84 percent drop in face matching accuracy for a given stakeholder would result in a 13x manpower requirements increase to sustain their day-to-day operations. The potential increase in 4 Fingerprint Identification Numbers (FINs) would require a semi-annual process to clean up, taking away valuable time and resources for maintaining mission critical operations. 4 FINs are unknown biometrics that don’t match anything else on record in the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART). Additional funding and manpower would be needed to manage the increase in workload for OBIM and its stakeholders. The extent of which would only be discovered after going live, if executed without proper testing beforehand.”

HART will replace the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) system upon initial operation capability that’s slated for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026.

DHS said that “while OBIM is still using IDENT, a transition to another contract mechanism without critical disruptions to system operational availability would be very difficult and cost prohibitive due to the size and complexity of the IDENT system requirements. Replacing the vendor that is supporting IDENT at this time would be synonymous with the cost and time associated with the initial development and testing for the HART face matching capability but multiplied by a factor of two to account for replacing the face matching capability in both the HART and IDENT systems to include retesting with all +55 interfacing stakeholders for each system.”

DHS said “there are over 1.2 billion face images that have been feature-extracted for use with the NEC AIM XM product in both OBIM/IDENT and OBIM/HART systems that would need to be re-extracted for a replacement face matching product. The timeframe to complete such an endeavor is a minimum of 6 to 12 months for both HART and IDENT. It is anticipated that the other four DHS components would have to undergo a similar feature extraction endeavor for every system that the AIM-ES/XM product is implemented in. OBIM is in the process of establishing a Biometric Laboratory Environment (BLE) for the purpose of testing matcher software [which] will enable OBIM to perform the necessary tests to compare matcher service providers. The anticipated schedule for the BLE to be operational is June of 2025.”

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  DHS  |  government purchasing  |  Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART)  |  NEC NSS  |  OBIM