Northrop picks team for FBI bid

Northrop Grumman Corp. has chosen its partners in its bid for the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Next Generation Identification contract. The contract is for a 10-year development, operations and maintenance program.

The system that the winning contractor team will provide biometric services to support the FBI's expanded mission.

The agency currently uses a fingerprint identification system to automatically match prints. The new system will expand that capability to include other biometrics such as facial shape, palm prints and iris scans.

The FBI's CJIS is based in Clarksburg, W.Va., and Northrop's team has several West Virginia businesses: Azimuth Inc., Key Logic Systems Inc., DSD Laboratories Inc., Galaxy Global Corp. and the West Virginia High Technology Consortium.

Other team members are BearingPoint Inc., General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Corp., IBM Corp., BEA Systems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., EMC Corp., Oracle Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Ideal Innovation Inc.

Northrop Grumman built a fingerprint database system for the United Kingdom's National Policing Improvement Agency, and has won contracts from the Defense Department and for automated biometric systems. The company plans to draw on those experiences in competing for the FBI contract.

Northrop Grumman of Los Angeles ranked No. 3 on Washington Technology's 2007 Top 100 list of the largest federal government prime contractors.