The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is seeking to adopt a new system which would allow it to electronically capture and process biometric identifiers to determine threats to the country, according to a report by Washington Technology.

The department wants to use biometric enrollment data file plans to compare the data against other U.S. terrorist, intelligence and criminal databases to pinpoint potential criminals.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is also looking to use the system for its own criminal investigations and personnel security.

State Department officials regularly gather fingerprints in criminal investigations, while the department is currently using biometrics to perform various tasks, such as employee vetting, access control, and ID card issuance.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is looking to hire a company that can manage the workflow of electronic biometric transmission specification files into the centrally located storage database that the State Department operates.

Among the many tasks the system must be able to perform are assessing whether the data already exists, migrating the data to non-State Department systems for comparison, and receiving responses from the external systems.

State officials said that all biometric files will include fingerprints, although they have not decided if any will also include face and iris data.

But officials said they expect that approximately 40% of all files will feature fingerprints and either facial and iris data by 2018.

The State department’s goal is to have the central server completely integrated within a year and incrementally build about 500 biometric collection stations.