The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded Accenture Federal Services a 13-month, $71 million contract to add biometric modalities and other enhancements to the US-VISIT program. US-VISIT uses digital fingerprints and photographs. A pilot program included in the contract will test facial and iris voluntary identification enrollment and matching.

The program provides biometric information to the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration. Upgrades under the contract also will enable biometric information to be shared in real time with the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Defense.

The federal government verifies biometric information collected by US-VISIT. The information is checked against a watch list of known or suspected terrorists, criminals and wanted felons, and for possible violation of immigration laws.

Accenture began working on US-VISIT in 2004, overseeing operational responsibility for the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT). Since then, it has become the largest biometric identity solution in the world, processing more than 300,000 encounters a day against a database of more than 130 million stored encounters. The average response time for users is less than 10 seconds.