The FBI has issued a new Request for Information (RFI No. 2) seeking advanced biometric matching algorithms to support the next evolution of its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, signalling an ongoing refresh of one of the world’s largest criminal biometric infrastructures. The special notice, posted on November 21, invites vendors to provide information on algorithms for tenprint fingerprints, latent fingerprints, facial recognition, iris recognition and image-based tattoo matching, with responses due by December 31, 2025.
The effort is led by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia, which manages NGI and provides biometric and criminal history data services to law enforcement agencies across the United States. According to procurement summaries, the new RFI continues the Bureau’s market research into commercially available biometric engines, focusing on how they perform at scale for law enforcement identification and investigative use cases.
As with the FBI’s earlier biometric algorithm RFI, vendors are expected to participate in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) biometric vendor testing programs and to share relevant results with the Bureau. The notice describes the NIST testing platforms as the primary mechanism for evaluating algorithm performance, with the FBI using those independent results to inform strategic decisions about future NGI upgrades and potential replacement of existing matching engines. Vendors are encouraged to provide details on which modalities they have submitted to NIST, how their algorithms are configured for large-scale identification workloads and what prior test results demonstrate about accuracy, throughput and robustness.
The inclusion of image-based tattoo matching alongside tenprint, latent, face and iris suggests the FBI is looking beyond traditional biometric modalities to widen its investigative toolkit. Tattoo recognition has been a growing area of interest for law enforcement, particularly for linking images from the field or open sources to known records. By explicitly calling out tattoo algorithms in the same breath as core NGI modalities, the Bureau is signalling that it sees tattoo imagery as part of its mainstream biometric matching stack rather than an experimental add-on.
For potential suppliers, RFI No. 2 is not a solicitation but an opportunity to influence how the FBI structures future procurements around NGI. The Bureau is using this phase to map the current state of the market, understand which vendors have NIST-tested engines across multiple modalities and gauge how far accuracy, speed and scalability have advanced since its last round of market research. For the broader identity technology sector, the RFI underlines the continued centrality of independent NIST testing as a de facto benchmark for federal biometric deployments and highlights the direction of travel for large-scale criminal identification systems that increasingly blend fingerprints, face, iris and tattoos into a unified biometric search environment.
Sources: SAM.gov
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By Ji-seo Kim
