The Department of Home Affairs has begun replacing the managed services contract that underpins its three primary identity matching systems, including the contentious national face recognition database. On Thursday, the super-agency began searching for a new service provider to ensure that its identity matching services (IDMS) solution remained “very dependable” for users across the economy.
IDMS is a collection of systems managed by Home Affairs on behalf of the federal, state, and territory governments to combat identity fraud and assist law enforcement with criminal investigations.
It includes the document verification service (DVS), which is used for basic identification document checks and one-to-one and one-to-many facial verification via the face matching services (FMS) facility.
The IDMS also incorporates the national driver’s license facial recognition solution (NDLFRS), which, along with an interoperability hub that links matching requests with FMS, is known colloquially as ‘the Capability.’
The NDLFRS was established to save driver’s license information from each state and territory road agency, making it simpler for law enforcement authorities to communicate and access data in real-time. All government officials agreed upon the database in October 2017, but it is still down more than four years later, with laws clearing the way for the biometrics matching program blocked in parliament.
According to tender documents issued on Thursday, the new managed services provider would take the incumbent operator’s overall administration, operations, and maintenance of the NDLFRS.
As part of this, the provider will migrate the NDLFRS to its platform, which, according to Home Affairs, “must be capable of hosting a solution up to protected level.”
As part of the new arrangement, the supplier must “construct and install” the FMS and DVS hubs, perhaps combining the two into a single hub in the future.
FMS consists of the facial matching service (FMS), which performs one-to-one face verification service (FVS) checks, and the one-to-many face identification service (FIS), which is exclusively utilized by police.
Over the following three years, Home Affairs anticipates that the new contract will cost savings, notably by lowering the infrastructure footprint connected with the FMS and DVS centers.
