Lockheed team rolls out next gen ID system for FBI

After a delayed start due to a contractor protest almost three years ago, Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Next Generation Identification team is beginning to fully develop and deploy its enhancement of the FBI's latent fingerprint matching accuracy and to introduce palm-print matching to the system.

Lockheed Martin won the 10-year, $1 billion contract in February of 2008. But IBM Corp. lodged a protest with the Government Accountability Office and work was held up.

In May 2008, IBM and Lockheed Martin agreed to work together. Lockheed Martin would provide program management and oversight in addition to biometric and large-systems development and integration expertise and IBM as a subcontractor would supply some IT services in addition to specific software and hardware to be used in the NGI system.

The enhancement efforts began after a successful critical design review for the system's Increment 3. The milestone came just weeks after the FBI declared initial operating capability on NGI's Increment 1 fingerprint matching capability, according to an April 12 Lockheed statement.

"The FBI's Next Generation Identification system is now operational and providing law enforcement officials with more accurate fingerprint identification services than ever before," said June Shrewsbury, vice president of Lockheed's Citizen Protection Solutions division, in the announcement.

NGI is providing an incremental replacement of the FBI's current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which collects and stores fingerprints related to law enforcement investigations.

The latent and palm print matching algorithms for the NGI system will be provided by MorphoTrak, of Alexandria, Va. MorphoTrak also provided the system's fingerprint matching algorithms.

NGI's Increment 2, Repository for Individuals of Special Concern (RISC), is also progressing according to schedule, the announcement states.

Now in the final stages of development, this phase will provide law enforcement with more speed and flexibility in how they search the FBI's RISC fingerprint database, which includes wanted persons, known or appropriately suspected terrorists, sex offender registry subjects, and other persons of special interest.

The Lockheed Martin NGI team also includes Accenture, BAE Systems Information Technology Inc., Global Science and Technology, and Innovative Management and Technology Services.

Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., ranks No. 1 on Washington Technology’s 2010 Top 100 list of the largest federal government contractors.