Nearly 80 years after it began collecting fingerprints on index cards as a way to identify criminals, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is moving to a new system that improves the accuracy and performance of its existing setup while adding more biometrics. By adding palm print, face, and iris image search capabilities, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) hopes to improve the accuracy of identity searches, make it easier to positively identify and track criminals as they move through the criminal justice system and provide a wider range of tools for crime scene investigators.

To take full advantage of all of the new capabilities, however, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies may need to update their own systems to be able to capture the data, forward it to the FBI and search against the nationwide database.

"Most booking stations are starting to gather all of the modalities — fingerprints, palm, and face and iris," says Jon Kevin Reid, assistant section chief in the CJIS division.

But many regional and local law enforcement systems don’t yet capture all of that information and will need to upgrade their own systems to reap the benefits from the new system. The current database, the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint ID System (IAFIS), includes information on 135 million criminals and terrorists, as well as civil servants and other citizens who work in "positions of trust."

Since its launch in 2008, the $1.2 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) project has been incrementally replacing pieces of the aging IAFIS and adding new features […]