Novetta Fingerprint Processing System Garners FedID Award for NCIS

Novetta is celebrating after its solution took home the prize for Best Technical Achievement at the 2020 FedID Awards. The award is given to a solution that will have a significant influence on the government’s identity practices moving forward.

This year’s prize went to the RISER Program, which was developed by Novetta on behalf of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Technical Services Field Office – Identity Activities Branch (TSFO-IA). The Program dramatically reduces the amount of time needed to turn the images on fingerprint cards into digital images that are compatible with automated fingerprint matching systems and criminal databases.

RISER is designed primarily for law enforcement. The program allowed a team of seven people to scan 57,000 cards in only 48 hours, achieving an hourly rate that represents a 3,390 percent improvement on the government’s prior capabilities. With RISER, a project that was expected to take a year was completed in a week.

“Over the last 18 months the processing power of RISER has evolved through iterative development cycles into a reliable, sustainable, operational capability,” said NCIS Supervisory Special Agent Eric Trest. “Today, NCIS relies heavily upon RISER to accomplish our Identity Activities mission.”

RISER has been used by other government agencies, including the Department of State, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Justice. Other members of the TSFO-IA team include OUSD A&S, CDM, DFSC and the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.

A Novetta executive previously played a key role in the development of the ISO/IEC JTC anti-spoofing standard. The Department of Homeland Security is currently migrating its entire biometric database to the cloud, though a recent assessment has raised concerns about whether or not the agency fully respects the privacy of American civilians.

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September 18, 2020 – by Eric Weiss