The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) plans to migrate
its ten-year-old passport IT systems to a service oriented
architecture under a
£385m, 10-year contract with CSC signed today.
The IPS, which had originally hired Siemens to install bespoke
passport applications based on Oracle, now wants to remove paper
processing from the back office and increase counter-fraud
measures.
The IPS told Computer Weekly, "We will be retaining Oracle data
structures but replacing the bespoke applications with a variety of
commercial off-the-shelf products configured for use in this
environment."
These will include:
- GUI: Weblogic web-based interface
- Application: Tibco iProcess workflow and BPM ilog rules
- Middleware: Tibco Business Works ESB and EMS
- Database: Oracle
The IPS has awarded a separate contract to IBM, worth £265m over
10 years. It will provide the National Biometrics Information
Service (NBIS), which is described as the government's strategic
solution for civil use of biometrics.
NBIS will replace the UK Border Agency's Immigration and Asylum
Fingerprint System (IAFS), which is operated by Sagem and runs
Sagem's proprietary biometric matching software on a Versant
database.
IBM has indicated that it will subcontract the supply of a
biometric matching system to Sagem, and may host the Sagem software
on its iDataPlex hardware. The plan is to use many IBM software and
hardware products across the rest of the solution.
The IPS said, "The biometric matching system is the critical
component that undertakes fingerprint and face comparisons and
image storage.
"Although a Sagem matching system will be used in the first
instance, NBIS is architected to minimise the overhead of making
changes, either to add new types of biometric or to replace the
matching system in its entirety. At its peak, the matching system
will have to process in excess of 50,000 fingerprint transactions
per day and contain over 100 million fingerprint records."
Specific components of the new IBM system include:
- Server operating systems: mix of AIX, Windows 2008 and Red Hat
Linux
- Middleware: Websphere
- Databases: mix of DB2, Oracle, SQL Server
- Hardware: IBM System p and x Servers, IBM iDataplex
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