FBI Plans Major Database Urgrade
The Criminal Justice Information Service (CJIS) Division of the FBI is preparing in-depth plans for a total restructuring of its vast fingerprint database that will improve interoperability with the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric records and pave the way for adding more kinds of biometrics.
To symbolize these substantial changes, the FBI intends to switch the name of its Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) to Next Generational Identification (NGI). The upgrade will involve hundreds of millions of dollars with a proposal request stage starting in January 2007.
President Bush stated that new biometric tactics such as facial recognition, iris scans, hand authentication, and DNA are now obtaining importance, and CJIS authorities want their system to be equipped to process them. Part of the reason for the restructuring is to lower the IAFIS mistake factor of 2 percent.
Demand for IAFIS fingerprint queries has been rising, partially because background checks are occurring more often with companies and state legislatures.
The three-stage procedure to construct NGI will start with a temporary Data Sharing Model scheduled to be introduced on Sept. 3. The proposal request for January 2007 will concentrate on the next two phases in constructing NGI, referred to as the Initial Operating Capability and Financial Operating Capability.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Government Computer News (08/28/06); Dizard, Wilson P. III .
