Sopra Steria and IDEMIA have been jointly awarded a contract to redesign and install a fingerprint management system under a French Justice and Interior ministerial project.
The government’s fingerprint database (“FAED”), which has been running since 1990, is often pivotal in police criminal investigations and securing court convictions. Faced by constantly rising repeat criminal offender numbers since 2005, it has become imperative to upgrade the forensic police’s IT systems.
This project, dubbed “FAED V3”, aims to ensure at all times top system performance to definitively identify criminals. FAED V3 development is a huge challenge given that fingerprint identification requires a reliable, flexible and accurate system.
The new system will also have to be interoperable with EU police systems so that the Justice Ministry can access the European Commission’s ECRIS TCN criminal record database and thus help keep tabs on criminal suspects from other European countries.
Sopra Steria and IDEMIA have previously successfully collaborated on other strategic projects. Their alliance provides unrivalled biometric expertise and in-depth understanding of the operational, functional and forensic issues involved.
As overall system project manager, Sopra Steria will be responsible for software and all contract-related services, while IDEMIA will take on data transfer, biometric software development and hardware maintenance backed by unmatched expertise throughout.
Sopra Steria and IDEMIA successfully joined forces on another strategic project to develop a pooled biometric data matching system (sBMS) for the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Agencies’ Network that required operational management of large-scale data systems (eu-LISA).
Sopra Steria and IDEMIA’s new project represents a big leap forward in French fingerprint management systems and will give law enforcement much more powerful tools to reliably and rapidly identify suspects.
It is fully in line with both firms’ ongoing support for French government departments; indeed the Ministry of the Interior has hired both firms to develop a central border control system.
“We’re immensely proud that the French Interior and Justice ministries trust us to carry out this strategic project, which comes on top of further transformative IT projects we do for these ministries drawing on our heralded biometric systems development experience in Europe,” commented Etienne Loth, Sopra Steria’s Homeland Security Contract Director. “Our and IDEMIA’s staff are all set to join forces, build and deliver a stand-alone, robust and high-performance system harnessing their varied and complementary skillsets.
“We’re immensely proud to sign this historic contract with the French Interior and Justice ministries,” said Laurent Pellegrin, IDEMIA Vice President France Public Security and Identity. “Apart from ramping up our strategic alliance with the French government, this contract is testament to our capacity to offer state-of-the-art, unique and ground-breaking IT systems that often come top in terms of accuracy and equity of tests covering all systems worldwide held by independent organisations like NIST.
“This contract is further proof of our longstanding fruitful teamwork with Sopra Steria to serve the public interest.”
