Fingerprinting At Airports Paves Way For Big VISIT Contract

The launch of US-VISIT means overseas visitors traveling with visas entering the country are routinely being photographed and fingerprinted with biometric scanners for the first time at 115 airports and 14 of the most widely trafficked cruise-ship ports of entry. US-VISIT is a significant initiative that the DHS has placed on a fast track to better secure the nation's ports against terrorism, while ensuring ease of entry for legitimate travel and commerce.

The newly formed department, which comprises 22 government agencies, including components of Immigration and Naturalization, Transportation, Customs and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, released the RFP (http://www.dhs.gov/interweb/assetlibrary/US-VISIT\\_RFP\\_\\_HSSCHQ04R0096.pdf) for border protection in late November, and bids are due by the end of this month. In the meantime, DHS has rolled out at the ports of entry 3,000 Dell PCs and biometric scanners procured under existing contracts from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based Cross Match Technologies, which sells forensic-quality fingerprint-identification devices, software applications and services.

Implementing biometrics technologies has been high on the United States' agenda since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. DHS pulled out all the stops last year to get US-VISIT rolling. It was initially held up by funding, but in September, Congress appropriated $380 million for the 2003 fiscal year and an additional $330 million this year. A successful pilot in November at Atlanta's Hatfield International Airport paved the way for the Jan. 5 launch. It comes at a pivotal time, as the nation remains in a state of heightened alert. The rollout was particularly challenging due to the urgency in rolling out the first phase of US-VISIT on time, says Scott Hastings, CIO for the US-VISIT Program Management Office within the DHS. "It was a very aggressive schedule," he says. "We deployed 3,000 workstations [PCs] plus the associated peripherals,cameras, fingerprint-capture devices. When you do that at 115 airports and 14 seaports all over the country, the logistics of that is quite a challenge."

The IT integrator that wins the bid and their selected subcontractors will likely run the program over a 10-year period in a deal that will be worth billions of dollars overall.

"It's definitely getting a lot of notice," says Alicia Cudd, an analyst at Input, a market research firm specializing in government IT. The leading contenders, observers say, are teams headed by Accenture, CSC and Lockheed Martin, although the contract could mean plenty of business for a slew of government integrators.

While this is a key piece of business, it is also pivotal in advancing biometric scanners from a niche technology to one that is broadly used to authenticate individuals accessing both government and commercial systems.

"This is certainly the largest-scale implementation of biometrics that's been conceived of by the federal government, and it very likely will set the standard for the use of biometrics for many years to come," says Dennis Carlton, an analyst at the International Biometric Group (IBG), a New York-based consulting firm that's been tapped to help DHS assess the bids. IBG is forecasting a 37 percent jump in sales of biometric devices this year. Last year, IBG had forecast sales would be $928 billion.

The success of the biometric rollout, however, will probably ride less on the technology than on other factors, including those challenging its effect on privacy and other issues, such as its impact on logistics. Nevertheless, DHS Secretary Tom Ridge is a champion of biometrics. "US-VISIT is an important new element in the global war against terrorism, and will serve as a catalyst in the growing international use of biometrics to expedite processing of travelers," Ridge said in a statement. "We want to show the world that we can keep our borders open and our nation secure."