An Army-owned and -operated biometric device used in Iraq and Afghanistan, which accounts for 13 percent of biometric records maintained by the entire Defense Department, fails to comply with data collection standards that facilitate information sharing with agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The device submits more information than any other DoD biometric device, but the 630,000 biometric records it has produced are not searchable against the FBI's 94 million biometric records, found a GAO audit dated March 2011 but released publically May 2.

These problems limit the DoD's, and other agencies', "ability to identify potential criminals or terrorists who have biometric records in other federal agency's biometric systems," wrote Davi D'Agostino, GAO director of defense capabilities and management. What's more, this could "result in the military services incurring delays and additional costs," he wrote.

Not only has DoD failed to remedy these biometric information sharing issues, it has no plan in place to implement the standards to promote interoperability; it doesn't test systems or devices for compliance with data-sharing standards; and it has not set roles, responsibilities or accountability to move standardization along, according to the report.

While biometric information is lacking due to a noncompliant Army device, many devices are automatically sharing searchable biometric data, and the framework for information sharing between DoD and the Justice Department is largely in place. Such an information-sharing framework does not exist, however, for DoD to share with the Homeland Security Department, and therefore the State Department which relies on DHS's biometric system. According to the report, DoD and DHS aim to have "a memorandum of understanding to share biometric information" in May 2011.

"DoD's ability to optimize sharing is limited by not having a finalized sharing agreement with DHS, and its capacity to process biometric information" wrote D'Agostino.

"Moreover, the advancements other agencies make in their biometric systems may continue to overwhelm DoD's efforts as it works to identify its long-term biometric system capability and associated costs," he added.

For more:
- see the GAO report, GAO-11-276 (.pdf)

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