Requirements: One Leg of the Three-Legged Stool for Biometrics Program

Establishing an official Program of Record in the Army can be compared to a three-legged stool held in place by requirements, material development, and funding.  The job of writing requirements for an Army program is the responsibility of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which oversees the various branch centers, such as Infantry, Armor, and Field Artillery to name a few.  TRADOC turned to the intelligence community for the lead on biometric requirements.  This is because it was foreseen that, while biometrics will address gaps for all Army branches, the intelligence community will be one of the biggest users of the technology.  In October 2006, the Army Intelligence Center in Ft. Huachuca, Az., commenced the effort that is expected to culminate in a Personnel Identification Capabilities Development Document (CDD).  In addition, due to its extensive experience in the development of requirements documentation, the Intelligence Center is assisting the Biometrics Task Force in the development of a draft Biometrics Enterprise Core Capabilities (BECC) CDD.

“More and more, programs of this nature are coming to us,” said Dr. Edward A. Cerutti, an analyst at the Army Intelligence Center.  “The application of the program goes across the board into virtually all warfighting and business areas.”  He said that in his 15 years of uniformed and contractor experience in materiel development and writing requirements that “biometric requirements address more than twice as many warfighting gaps as any of the other programs that I’ve worked on.”

The Biometrics Enterprise Core Capabilities (BECC) CDD captures the requirements for biometric standards and for the authoritative biometrics database for fingerprints, face and iris images.  Biometric standards are required in order to enable the sharing of biometric files within and outside the Department of Defense within statutory and regulatory boundaries.  The authoritative database will serve as a repository for biometric files for adversary and humanitarian operations.  The initial draft of the BECC CDD is scheduled for March 2009.  According to Cerutti, a number of In Progress Reviews will be held in advance of the initial draft to gather input from all Services as well as affected DoD and federal agencies.

The Personnel Identification (PI) CDD will capture Army requirements to address a total of 195 identified gaps for personnel identification in friendly, adversary, and neutral environments.  These gaps, which have been cross-walked with joint and other Service requirements, will be addressed through common software, which will enable users to collect, match, store, and share biometric files within statutory and regulatory requirements.  This common software will enable the efficient integration of various existing and future modalities (e.g., fingerprint, facial, iris, DNA) and will allow for the inclusion of ‘best of breed’ commercial hardware.  The initial draft of the PI CDD is scheduled for September 2008.