The Home Office has appointed science and technology company Leidos to bring together its two major biometrics systems.
The firm has won a 10-year contract to converge and operate the central and bureau elements of IDENT 1 – the fingerprint system used by police and justice agencies – and the Immigration and Asylum Biometric System (IABS). The plan to consolidate the two was announced in January 2018.
The original information notice for the contract, published last year, set the value at up to £308 million.
Leidos said it will work with the Home Office and its partners on modernising and disaggregating the systems, moving them to a secure public cloud based platform. This is aimed at providing a springboard for further digital transformation of the service.
The work will take place as part of the Strategic Central and Bureau Platforms project within the Home Office Biometrics Programme.
The project will not involve any changes to who can access IDENT1 and IABS, with the Home Office continuing to be in control of that element.
Vital capability
Tim Crofts, UK vice president of business development and strategy at Leios, said: “This capability is vital to the UK’s security, border and policing services and we will bring to bear our 50 years’ experience in delivering complex change to transform and secure critical services for government departments and agencies.”
Over the past 18 months the Home Office has awarded other contracts as part of the programme: Fujitsu won a deal to provide a platform for matching biometrics, and Mastek was signed to provide strategic application development and a support capability.
Image from Jan Kalab, CC BY 2.0 through flickr
