The U.S. Army recently awarded a Technical Direction Letter to the Parsons Corporation valued at $1.9M.  The Letter’s purpose is to procure biometric mobile and static collection devices, including peripherals and software in support of the Next Generation Biometrics Collection Capability (NXGBCC).  The collection devices will collect, store, match, and share four key biometric modalities (fingerprint, facial, iris and voice).  Parsons will integrate the devices into the Ares Gateway Transaction Manager (AGTM).  The AGTM will be hosted in a government-provided Amazon Web Services (AWS) IL5 Gov-Cloud that will submit collections to Department of Defense Automated Biometric Identification System (DoD ABIS) for comparison purposes. Subsequently, DoD ABIS will automatically return biometric matches to the AGTM and to the collection device in near real-time. The Letter’s period of performance is through April 2025.

Both the NXGBCC and DoD ABIS programs are managed by Project Manager Terrestrial Sensors (PM TS) and its subordinate product management office, Product Manager Biometrics.  DoD ABIS is the DoD’s authoritative repository of biometrics data. NXGBCC is scheduled for fielding in 2025 and will incorporate fingerprint, iris, voice, and facial biometric modalities to inform Soldiers of identities in near real time.  NXGBCC represents the first time that the Army is fielding a capability that is software-based (with added voice modality) and is not tied to unique hardware that must be maintained.

“The NXGBCC searches a given biometric submission [also referred to as an “enrollment] against 30 million encounters and more than 13 million identities in DoD ABIS, as well as against the largest (i.e., 500,000) unsolved latent fingerprint file in the government,” said Lareina Adams, Project Manager, Terrestrial Sensors.