Texans will soon have greater access to a state-run, fingerprint-based background check program. In collaboration with MorphoTrust USA (Safran), the Department of Public Safety’s Fingerprint Applicant Services of Texas (FAST) program is going to see an additional 55 enrollment facilities open up.
The development will bring more enrollment centers to under-served rural areas in particular, which could be a major relief to individuals seeking employment, as government agencies including the Department of Family and Protective Services, the Texas Education Agency, and the Board of Nursing all have standards encouraging job applicants and volunteers to undergo such background checks.
The new facilities will represent a substantial increase over the 93 enrollment centers currently in the state. In a statement announcing the expansion, MorphoTrust CEO Bob Eckel emphasized the benefits that the platform offers citizens, noting that the FAST program will serve over 800,000 Texans a year, and that MorphoTrust’s technology and services “offer security, accuracy, reliability, and convenience.”
The enrollment facilities are actually IdentoGO centers, the same facilities at which the company enrolls individuals in TSA PreCheck, a program that pre-screens individuals for air travel, via the same biometric technology. While MorphoTrust has heavily promoted IdentoGO centers for this purposes, the facilities’ versatility for biometric screening suggests that many more facilities offering a wider range of services could open up across the country going forward.
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May 12, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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