The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have issued a request for information (RFI) for an identity-based biometric system capable of enrolling and searching multiple biometric modalities, including face, fingerprint, palmprint, iris, and latent fingerprints.
The RFI, titled Identity-Based Biometric System, is published on SAM.gov under solicitation number 01302025. The opportunity was posted on February 5, 2026, with responses due by February 20, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. The issuing office is identified as FBI-JEH.
The system is intended to support enrollment, storage, and search of biometric and associated biographic data within a unified identity framework. Deployment is expected to operate at Secret and Top-Secret/SCI classification levels, reflecting use in highly sensitive environments.
The scope also includes the ability to ingest external data feeds, expanding the range of biometric and biographic sources available for matching and analysis. Together, these requirements point to a platform designed for integrated identity management rather than standalone biometric matching.
The RFI explicitly calls out support for face, fingerprint, palmprint, iris, and latent fingerprint modalities, signaling a requirement for full multimodal capability. The described functionality aligns with ABIS-style workflows that combine biometric capture, matching, and investigative use within secure systems.
The notice is issued as a market survey rather than a solicitation for bids, and no contract award timeline has been specified. For vendors, however, the RFI provides a clear indication of the modalities, system scope, and classification constraints under consideration.
The FBI has been pursuing broader biometric modernization efforts in recent years, including a $128 million contract awarded to Leidos for NGI modernization and a series of RFIs focused on upgraded matching capabilities.
Those efforts include the FBI’s second RFI for biometric matching algorithms and an earlier RFI seeking advanced biometric algorithms, both of which emphasized performance improvements for core modalities. The current RFI expands that scope to include palmprints and latent fingerprints within a unified identity-based system.
As DOJ and the FBI continue to refresh biometric infrastructure, the new RFI reinforces demand for multimodal software platforms capable of operating across classified environments while integrating external data sources.
Sources: SAM.gov, SAM.gov API
–
By Cass Kennedy
