The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division has issued a request for information seeking industry input on biometric matching algorithms for its Next Generation Identification system, the national repository that holds the fingerprints, faces, and other biometric records used in US law enforcement. The request covers a broad set of modalities and signals a planned migration of the matching infrastructure into an FBI-approved cloud environment.
The RFI asks vendors to describe matching capabilities across rolled fingerprints, flat or slap fingerprints, latent fingerprints, facial recognition, iris recognition, and tattoo pattern recognition. Beyond the algorithms, it asks about a web-based latent case management system for the examiners and investigators who work latent prints, indicating the FBI is looking at both the matching engines and the workflow tooling that sits around them.
The technical requirements set a high bar. The FBI is asking for NIST-tested performance, secure domestic handling of software, deployment within a government cloud environment, and FedRAMP High compliance, the most stringent tier of the federal cloud security program. All of the modalities and the latent case management system would reside within an FBI-approved GovCloud environment, pointing to a migration of the matching infrastructure off legacy systems and into the cloud.
The scale figures in the request convey the size of the task. The latent repository is listed at 650 million records, the fingerprint gallery at 200 million records with an average 5.2 million searches per month, the face gallery at 175 million records, the Rapid Ten Print service at 10 million records, and the iris gallery at 2 million records. Any vendor would need matching algorithms that hold accuracy at those volumes while migrating live galleries without disrupting the searches that law enforcement agencies run daily.
The request also carries supply-chain and ownership conditions. Foreign companies would be required to provide a secure facility physically located in the United States for building, compiling, and initial testing of software components, and the FBI is asking vendors to disclose their ownership structure, including any foreign-ownership concerns.
The notice follows an earlier round of market research. The FBI previously sought industry input on biometric matching algorithms for NGI in an earlier RFI, and has separately been conducting market research into iris capture cameras as it builds out an iris identification service. The new request is more detailed on cloud deployment, FedRAMP High, and the repository migration than the earlier notice.
The RFI is market research, gathering industry capability information ahead of any future procurement for the NGI matching infrastructure.
Sources: GovTribe
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
