Northrop Grumman takes on the biometrics market

Where there is money, there is Northrop Grumman, and no more is that true than in the biometrics market. After all, worldwide government spending on biometric technologies is expected to grow from $650 million in 2005 to almost $2 billion in 2008, with total biometrics spending is expected to increase from $1.8 billion to more than $5 billion in the same time period. In the United States, this means major contracts from the Department of Defense, DHS, the Social Security Adminstration, and the Veterans Administration — all of which have good reason to track large numbers of people. It also means compliance with HSPD-12 and FIPS 201, two standards driving the federal market today.

Northrop efforts in the biometrics field dates back to 2003, when the company built the Reston, Virginia-based Center for Smart Study Solutions, a biometrics research and development lab featuring technology from Northrop and thirty-five of its industry partners. Yet it’s biggest success actually predates the center, when Northrop won a 1999 contract to overhaul the fingerprint storage system for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). “It was an opportunity for fraud,” said one source familiar with the earlier set-up. “Reject rates ran as high as 20 percent.” Success on that front eventually led to a $357 million award last October (with a potential extention for another $400 million) to provide biometric services in support of U.S. citizenship applications and green card renewals. Under the contract, Northrop is responsible for 190 stand-alone biometric scanners, forty-eight small sites, and 136 application support centers.

Three other companies are involved in the projecting, including Orlando, Florida-based USE; Mansfield, Massachusetts-based Pinkerton Government Services; and Geneva, Switzerland-based International Organization for Migration. It has been tough work all around: “The biggest challenge has been to keep a flexible workforce, to accommodate changes in scheduling,” said Lee Bandel, ASC program manager. Northrop for its part has a full-time staff of 1,300 and an additional 800 working part-time on the USCIS contract.

Nota bene: Readers should not forget our report last week that El Segundo, California-based Computer Sciences Corporation had won a $5.9 million deal with USCIS to develop the Integrated Digitization Document Management Program (IDDMP), which aims to convert so-called “alien files” (or A-files) from paper to digital format.

-read more in this GSN report