Home Office Biometrics Matcher Platform and associated Services

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (referred to as the Home Office) is the lead government department for immigration and passports and is responsible for securing the UK border, controlling immigration and issuing passports and visas.

The Home Office, acting through Home Office Biometrics (HOB), is the Authority seeking to procure services for the provision of Biometric Matcher Platform and associated Services (BMPS).

The Matcher Service Platform (MSP) is a combination of a technology platform and the services required to support and operate the biometric matching functions. The MSP can be further broken down into:

• a Matcher Service Bus (MSB) where biometric transaction processing logic, biometric workflow rules, integration of Matching Engine Software (MES) and a Service Interface used by external subsystems; and
• the infrastructure platform to host and provide the computing capacity for the MSB and MES operations.

The BMPS Project can be defined in 5 stages as below:

Stage 1 - Transition of the services developed under the existing Matcher Platform supplier to the new supplier. These services are for the delivery of Matching Platform and Mark to Print search capability for Law Enforcement. This is expected to go live before this contract award.

Stage 2 - Delivery of other IDENT1 search capabilities (Print to Print, Print to Mark & Mark to Mark) for Law Enforcement allowing for the decommission of the legacy IDENT1 matching algorithm.

Stage 3 - Immigration collection moved from IABS to the Fingerprint & Face Algorithms on the MSP. This allows for the decommission of the legacy IABS fingerprint and face algorithms. This Stage deploys Face algorithm onto the Matcher Platform and is an enabler for Strategic Facial Matching for Law Enforcement as well as ETA Face for FBIS.

Stage 4 - Migration of HMPO, EUSS & FBIS collections onto the MSP (re-using the Face Algorithm on the Platform), allowing for the decommission of the IABS Passport Face Matcher.

Stage 5 - Facial matching for law enforcement use-case.

This contract is for a initial term of 5 years with option to extend by a further 3 years (5+1+1+1).