DHS outlines foreseeable biometric agenda, but will it have the funding?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has an ambitious biometric agenda going into Fiscal Year 2025. But the directorate also had its requested budget for FY 2025 slashed by $91.5 million by the House Committee on Appropriations before the committee sent the marked-up bill to the full House for a vote, which the House did, passing the measure on June 28 and sending it to the Senate, which has yet to act.

Overall, S&T’s research and development (R&D) was funded at $339 million to remain available until September 30, 2027. The directorate had asked for $402 million, which is still about $60 million less than it asked for in FY 2023 and FY 2024.

The bill was expected to be contentious when it reached the floor of the House for a vote. It narrowly passed 212-203.

The cuts did not set well with Democrats on the appropriations committee, who voted in a bloc against the cuts in the administration’s requested funding.

“The majority’s bill … exposes the United States to increased cyberattacks and foreign adversary influence. We all know that the final version of this bill will require bipartisan negotiations to make sound investments. The majority must reconsider the path it is on,” decried Committee Ranking Member Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Rep. Lauren Underwood said the cuts “severely underfunds programs across our government that keep us safe from terrorism and violent extremists, foreign influence, and cyberattacks. This extreme bill, full of harmful partisan policies, misses the mark and ignores our country’s most pressing needs, and I cannot support it.”

DHS’s budget bill is expected to be contentious in the Senate, and, possibly, could see funding restored in certain areas, or even increased. But, if that were to happen, it would face likely compromise in conference committee.

In April, Senator Patty Murray, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, lambasted Republicans for rejecting a bipartisan border package that also “would have delivered an infusion of funds to meet increased operational needs, leav(ing DHS) without sufficient resources” for the balance of this fiscal year “given the tight spending caps in place for base funding.”

Murray stressed “the importance of ensuring (DHS) has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission.”

Congress has until late September when fiscal year 2024 funding dries up.

At the moment, it’s unclear exactly how S&T’s biometric R&D programs will be impacted by the cuts. The directorate detailed its biometric activities in its FY 2025 budget justification to Congress.

The S&T Directorate has requested $3.3 million for biometrics and identity screening R&D for FY 2025, which it said “is consistent with the FY 2023” appropriation it received.

“Funding … will support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Field Operations (OFO) and US Secret Service (USSS) gaps, advise and supply technical assistance to measure and operationalize enhancements to the use of biometrics, and apply RDT&E to determine how components can effectively use biometric technology to rapidly verify or identify the identity of individuals within their respective mission areas,” S&T said.

S&T’s applied R&D biometric initiatives are under its Biometrics and Identity Management Program, which currently consists of two separate projects: Biometric and Identity Screening, and Biometric and Identity Concepts.

The directorate said “the S&T Biometric and Identity Screening Project’s activities increase the nation’s security at ports of entry (POEs) while expediting legitimate travel and improving passengers’ experience. The S&T Biometric and Identity Concept Project leverages S&T’s full matrix of services to pursue research, development, test, and evaluation of emerging biometric capability.”

The three major programs are:

Incorporation of facial recognition into vetting capabilities. The program advises and provides technical assistance to measure and operationalize enhancements to CBP face recognition capabilities. Activities include the Automated Traveler Verification Service (TVS) face recognition performance monitoring based on National Institute of Standards and Technology recommendation; informing incremental TVS performance enhancements; comparative evaluations of human performance and system performance; and enhancing overall system performance through officer and automated algorithm collaboration.
Biometric integration with the Office of Biometric and Identity Management (OBIM). This program assists DHS components in developing rigorous and technically defensible processes and tools to combine the capabilities of analysts/end-users with automated OBIM biometric capabilities to enhance the speed and quality of intelligence products. The goal is to provide knowledge products and subject matter expert support on best practices and workflows to utilize Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology biometric matching services.
Biometrics for vehicles at POEs. This program involves the application of RDT&E to determine how to effectively use biometric technology to rapidly verify the identity of individuals in vehicles entering (and exiting) the United States at land POEs.

The S&T Directorate explained that it’s working to “apply proven systems engineering approach to identify opportunities for changes to existing operations and present anticipated improvements, consequences, and costs of new solutions process and technology improvements.”

S&T said it accomplishes this “by conducting technology foraging, technology readiness evaluations, and operational readiness assessments to inform DHS acquisition planning for more capable/lower cost technologies, including biometric recognition capabilities, and to strengthen vetting and facilitate lawful and legitimate travel. This supports the evaluation of the cost effectiveness of capabilities and technologies to effectively adjust to evolving security and safety needs and use available manpower to adjust and scale operations. This will be accomplished through the following activities with the prioritization, initiation, and completion dependent on available funding and component input.”

S&T said the programs will enhance traveler identification validation; improve ability to detect terrorists, criminals, and dangerous individuals; streamline, scalable, and cost-effective security, screening, and inspection operations; reduce technical risk in DHS acquisition of secure, interoperable, enterprise solutions; improve DHS staffing efficiency; and improve traveler throughput and satisfaction.

S&T further explained that its biometric screening project’s R&D efforts “typically start with commercial off the shelf or government off the shelf technologies that are in use or being considered by DHS components for mission operations.”

It said identified technology is then validated “in a relevant environment” to answer the following questions: how technologies advance or perform relative to each other and their limits of technical performance; how technology performs for an intended use, the suitability of a system for an intended use, and demographic performance issues that cannot be answered through operational testing; and how technology performs within the specific operational environment and with specific users, and whether the technology meets specific operational performance benchmarks.”

As for the transitioning of its efforts, S&T said “transition is for knowledge products based on research and development conducted under the S&T Biometric and Identity Screening Project’s activities, namely within the Biometric Technology Center’s Maryland Test Facility (MdTF). Efforts in the MdTF are conducted per component related requirements and multiple distinct transitions are expected to occur each Fiscal Year.”

The MdTF allows for a controlled, reconfigurable environment suitable for comparing and contrasting technologies, observing and documenting human-device interactions, and measuring the impact of process changes on system and/or human performance.

During the 4^th quarter of the 2024 fiscal year, the S&T Directorate said it intends to do the following:

Deliver to CBP OFO a biometric test and evaluation report on its findings on COTS technologies that evaluate the capture of high-quality facial images of the vehicle driver and all passengers prior to the vehicle arriving at a land port of entry inspection booth.
Conduct a rally to inform DHS on identity and biometric technologies that both meet current component operational use cases and preserve privacy.
Deliver results of biometric workflow analysis and evaluation of technologies to support the incorporation and integration of USSS biometric-enabled missions with the Office of Biometric Identity Management Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology system. The results will inform the USSS in planning current enterprise improvements and future acquisition programs.
Conduct and deliver technology evaluation results to support the incorporation and integration of USSS biometric-enabled missions with the Office of Biometric Identity Management Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology system and assist the USSS in planning current enterprise improvements and future acquisition programs.
Conduct and deliver additional test and evaluation results on COTS technologies that capture facial images of people inside a vehicle and at land POE inspection booths. These COTS solutions will help inform CBP/OFO in planning future field evaluations and acquisition programs.
Conduct testing of new and emerging biometric technology systems at the Biometric Rally to inform DHS on facial recognition technologies that both meet current component operational use cases and preserve privacy.
Deliver results of evaluation of performance, vulnerabilities, and biases of new biometric identification workflows involving AI and AS.

By the end of FY 2025, S&T also intends to provide Immigrations and Customs Enforcement with biometric identification, speech/language, and other tools to combat online sexual exploitation.

Meanwhile, the S&T Directorate said, its Innovative Systems Technology Centers are working on an providing the ability of DHS “to establish and verify an individual’s identity” to enable it “to perform risk-based decision making that is tailored to the individual.”

“With the supply chain challenges surrounding 5G creating vulnerabilities in our infrastructure, to emerging new use of digital capabilities such as mobile driver’s licenses (mDL), digital trust and its enabling technologies will be a prevalent issue in the coming years, with widespread impact to many department missions,” S&T said.

The directorate said that “digital trust is critical to verifying the validity of data, maintaining privacy, and ensuring integrity across multiple platforms and applications. The Innovative Systems Technology Centers’ research into digital identity, trust and privacy focuses on enabling digital trust across platforms, technologies, and applications of importance to DHS,” which “continues to need an enhanced set of identity technologies, and capabilities (including but not limited to biometric capabilities) that component partners and S&T program managers can incorporate into their R&D projects. Additionally, they provide a sustainable, common platform for driving biometric and identity technology standards, best practices, and innovation across the department,” and enabling DHS components to quickly establish technical competence using more capable and cost effective biometric and identity technologies that facilitate operational excellence.

S&t said it also has completed a compilation of biometric collection systems and relevant technical specifications that it has shared with the DHS Strategic Sourcing Biometrics Integrated Project team.