FBI looks for better character recognition capabilities
By
Nick Wakeman
In a push to improve its forensic accounting work, the FBI is turning to industry to find better character recognition capabilities that includes artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The FBI is looking to improve how it conducts forensic accounting investigations by getting better optical character recognition capabilities.
In a new sources sought notice, the agency is collecting information on what’s available commercially. The FBI wants more ability to read printed and handwritten documents, plus increase use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve character recognition.
Other important factors include a contractor that has strong customer support, support for agency deadlines and faster solution development.
Types of documents the system will need to read include financial institution statements, credit card statements, deposit images, industry forms, and business forces. It’ll also need to process large amounts of data.
Depending on the investigation, FBI forensic accountants can examine years’ worth of documents that will need to be analyzed. But because of the limits of the FBI’s hardware, the system will need to run on older computers, according to the request for information.
The FBI also wants to automate as much of the process using business intelligence tools as possible.
The system will have to be compatible with Microsoft Excel, because the forensic accounts pull data into spreadsheets for analysis.
Responses to the RFI are due Feb. 28. The Notice ID on Beta.Sam.gov is RFi_FBI_FAU. You can search by using that identifier if the link doesn’t work.