Team developing NGI defines roles and responsibilities

Published 17 June 2008

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the FBI’s ambitious Next Generation Identification System; team members define their contributions to the project

The team is coming together — the team, that is, entrusted with helping the FBI create its ambitious Next Generation Identification System (NGI). The prime contractor on the FBI’s vast new database, Lockheed Martin will provide program management, biometrics, and large systems development, oversight, and integration expertise. IBM will supply some information technology services in addition to specific software and hardware. “We’re pulling integration skills together, we’re bringing subject domain experts in different elements than biometrics, we’re bringing our fusion experts across the corporation together,” Judy Marks, president of Lockheed Martin’s Transportation and Security Solutions told Washington Technology’s David Hubler. “We’re actually using several different business units within Lockheed Martin to optimize the data fusion.” Lockheed Martin will also recommend the best new innovative products available to the FBI, she added. In addition to IBM, the Lockheed Martin team includes Accenture LLP, BAE Systems Information Technology, Global Science and Technology, Innovative Management and Technology Services, Platinum Solutions, and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC).

Accenture will provide services in business architecture, training, service-oriented architecture, and biometric interoperability. BAE Systems IT will work on external interface requirements engineering and security design. GST and IMTS, small West Virginia businesses that have worked with Lockheed Martin on the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System program, will provide program continuity and systems engineering. Platinum Solutions is working with the FBI laboratory on related technologies. NCSC will help determine and oversee the program’s privacy considerations and provide guidance on activities involving the state courts. Lockheed’s Biometric Experimentation and Advanced Concepts Center in White Hall, West Virginia, which opened in May 2007, will also assist on the contract. The project is not limited to West Virginia. Work is also being done in Orlando, Florida, where the IUFiS system was developed, and Washington, D.C.