NIST, Air Force move to sole-source biometric testing and monitoring contracts

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Air Force Academy are pursuing separate sole-source contracts tied to biometric evaluation and biometric monitoring systems, underscoring growing government focus on trusted testing environments and controlled biometric data handling.

NIST intends to negotiate on a sole-source basis with Schwarz Forensic Enterprises Inc. for latent fingerprint ground truth determination support services.

The work would support NIST’s Evaluation of Latent Friction Ridge Technology program, known as ELFT, which is used to measure automated identification algorithm error rates.

NIST says its Information Technology Laboratory, Information Access Division, Image Group needs support to determine the ground truth source finger position for 3,000 latent impression images.

The contract would be tied to a body of friction ridge imagery NIST acquired as part of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity’s Nail-to-Nail Challenge.

Part of that data was released as NIST Special Database 302, but a critical portion was intentionally kept sequestered by NIST for biometric technology evaluations.

According to the notice, keeping that data unseen by technology evaluation participants is necessary to preserve confidence in benchmark results. Because the latent fingerprints requiring correlation came from larger regional photographs containing additional test prints, NIST says strict sequestration remains imperative.

The agency argues that introducing a new contractor would risk the integrity of the ELFT test corpus.

Schwarz Forensic Enterprises, according to NIST, has already been trusted with keeping both derived and raw data sequestered and was involved in the original work as certified latent print examiners and human subjects protection research experts responsible for the initial data collection.

NIST says Schwarz is uniquely positioned because it possesses the raw context and Institutional Review Board-approved data needed to verify source determinations without requiring NIST to release raw, unredacted imagery to another third party. The agency says that release would further jeopardize the sequestered nature of the evaluation data.

Meanwhile, the Air Force Academy says it intends to award a firm-fixed-price sole-source contract to Ouraring Inc. for 50 wearable smart ring performance monitoring devices.

The devices would be used by cadets through the Dean of Faculty Department of Biology to measure biometric data and provide insights into human performance and sleep quality and quantity.

The requirement calls for rings that can measure blood oxygen levels, heart rate, heart rate variability, body temperature variation, movement and activity, respiratory rates, and sleep quality and quantity.

The devices must accommodate ring sizes 6 through 15, have rechargeable batteries lasting at least five days, and produce data that shows at least 75 percent agreement with polysomnography sleep lab testing.

The academy also requires an enterprise software solution that can collect and analyze data from all devices in a single instance for fleet research.

According to the notice, the devices must connect to the enterprise application rather than to individual users, allowing rings and associated software access to be transferred from person to person.

One of the more notable requirements is that the associated software must not have AI features or capabilities.

The Air Force Academy says market research found that standard commercial smart rings generally rely on AI or algorithmic processing, but that Oura is the only manufacturer capable of providing a specialized configuration through the “Oura Research Application” that creates a blinded user experience and disables prohibited AI features to comply with Air Force cybersecurity mandates.

The notice also says Oura is the only known source capable of providing mandatory ring sizes 14 and 15 while meeting the government’s polysomnography agreement standard.

The academy says it found no authorized third-party enterprise resellers capable of meeting the requirement without creating unacceptable supply chain risk.

Article Topics

biometric testing  |  biometrics  |  ELFT  |  government purchasing  |  NIST  |  Oura  |  procurement  |  U.S. Air Force  |  U.S. Government