The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provides comprehensive, integrated identity management services to facilitate legitimate travel and trade while protecting our nation from terrorism and other threats. One facet of this capability is capturing fingerprints at ports of entry (airports, seaports, and land crossings), as well as at asylum application centers and during immigration and border enforcement activities. DHS Operates the largest biometric database in the world with over 89 million individuals documented biometrically using finger print scans.
The DHS provides enterprise identity management services and other NIEM-compliant information sharing capabilities to several DHS components, including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) (including Border Patrol), US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Through various agreements, policies and protocols, DHS also leverages US-VISIT to support the law enforcement and/or immigration operations of the DoS (visa applications), the DOJ (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigations), state and local law enforcement agencies, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), and several trusted foreign governments around the globe. The complete list of organizations seeking access to IDENT biometrics matching, as well as to biographic and case information associated with individuals enrolled in IDENT, is growing every year. This includes over 30 foreign governments as well as new uses by DHS components and other US agencies.
Due to increasing border control information sharing requirements and standardization, more complex technical interoperability challenges and the rapid introduction of new biometric facets across the Homeland Security community, IDENT has been significantly scaling both its technical and operations capabilities. Rapid scaling up of the organization has also required the development of new SOPs and business processes, especially in the systems engineering areas of change control, configuration management and automated testing.
Blackstone has been integral to the ongoing technical upgrades and the development of new system components and SOA-driven interfaces to successfully support DHS’s mission through Identity Management services and system features. This includes modernizing SOA-driven applications, creating Enterprise Services, designing and implementing Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) infrastructure conformant with National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) standards. Additionally, Blackstone provides engineering and operations capabilities for System Management, Maintenance, Performance Optimization and Tuning, leveraging very current SOA methods and architectural patterns. Many of Blackstone’s contributions to the US-VISIT SOA initiatives have contributed to the maturation of the broader DHS Enterprise Services Architecture and Governance ecosystem.
In addition to IT Engineering and Architecture services, Blackstone has been providing a wide range of management, policy and business planning support activities to US-VISIT, including:
- Development of governing documents for sharing information with international partners, such as Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) and consensus protocols;
- Project management support;
- Coordination with international stakeholders on their proposals to access IDENT;
- Development of business process models and business requirements; and
- Support for developing and analyzing international data sharing polices.
Find out also how our DHS EAGLE II - Team Blackstone Partner Companies are supporting additional DHS and Homeland Security initiatives!