State Department seeks sole-source upgrade of Honduras fingerprint system

The U.S. State Department is seeking to award a sole-source contract to modernize Honduras’ Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), expanding the Honduran National Police’s capacity to collect, process, search, and compare fingerprints while preserving biometric data links with El Salvador and Guatemala.

The proposed firm fixed-price award would go to Grupo Visión, a Honduran provider that the department describes as the exclusive intellectual property owner and only qualified source for the existing AFIS and SECURA Livescan systems.

The estimated value of the procurement is redacted in the justification document.

The system is intended for Honduras’ Police Criminal Investigations Unit (DPI). State Department officials say the modernization would build on AFIS infrastructure originally donated by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs in 2015.

AFIS is the central fingerprint matching system used to turn prints collected during arrests, investigations, or other encounters into searchable biometric records. It can compare an individual’s prints against records already held by police and produce possible matches for examination and verification.

The proposed upgrade would add separate servers for backup, processing and queries, and comparison and verification. It would also provide a regional SECURA server with licenses for biometric data exchange, 45 workstations, 10 flatbed scanners, 45 digital cameras, 13 multipurpose workstations, and configuration and data migration services.

The State Department said the equipment would strengthen the DPI’s investigative infrastructure, maintain biometric identification operations, and expand nationwide support for forensic and police work.

The SECURA component is part of an established framework for sharing biometric information among Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Separately, the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá issued a request for quotations for a project identified as the Biometrics Cartagena Office in Cartagena, Colombia.

Unlike the Honduran procurement, the Bogotá solicitation was conducted under full and open competition. The equipment is to be donated to the Colombian government.

The Cartagena solicitation appears to concern facility security and its technical specifications call for biometric access control equipment at office doors, including electromagnetic locks, door sensors, biometric readers, no-touch exit sensors, associated cabling and installation.

Several door kits identify Suprema BioEntry 2.0 equipment, or an equivalent product, as the preferred biometric reader.

Article Topics

AFIS  |  biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  Grupo Visión  |  Honduras  |  U.S. Government