The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has made progress in establishing long-term deployable biometrics and forensics capabilities, but further actions are needed, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
For its report, GAO was tasked by the House Armed Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to assess the extent to which the DOD since 2011 has validated long-term requirements for deployable biometric and forensic capabilities and actions taken to meeting long-term requirements for those capabilities and overcome related challenges.
According to GAO, DOD has validated its requirements for long-term deployable biometric capabilities, such as fingerprint identification, and forensic capabilities such as expeditionary laboratories.
Specifically, DOD’s biometric capabilities extend to identifying individuals based on measurable anatomical and behavioral characteristics such as fingerprints, iris scans, and voice recognition. For forensic capabilities, the department utilizes DNA and latent fingerprints to link persons, things and events. Both capabilities are used to assist the DOD in its mission for military operations and humanitarian assistance efforts.
The report found that the DOD has indeed made significant progress in addressing its long-term requirements for deployable and forensic capabilities, such as issuing new doctrine and establishing long-term funding for capabilities such as the authoritative biometric database.
However, GAO also found that DOD’s efforts to institutionalize those capabilities were limited by the following strategic planning gaps and acquisition management challenges. In one instance, the department was found to not have a strategic plan for its biometric capabilities but did have one for its forensic strategic plans.
In another instance, GAO found that the Army did not follow the DOD’s acquisition protocols in developing a recent key biometric capability, and it may have missed an opportunity to leverage existing, viable, and less-costly alternatives.
According to the report, addressing those strategic planning and acquisition management challenges could help the DOD sustain the progress it has made to establish enduring deployable biometric and forensic capabilities.
To address its strategic planning challenges, GAO made a number of recommendations including requiring the DOD to update its biometric enterprise strategic plan, take steps to more effectively manage the acquisition of a recent biometric capability, and consider developing a geographically-dispersed backup capability for its authoritative biometric database.