DOGE has arrived at the heart of Homeland Security’s biometrics operations

The Department of Government Efficiency has arrived at the Office of Biometric Identity Management, a quiet but powerful component of the Department of Homeland Security that handles a critical database of fingerprint, facial, and iris data used throughout the federal government.

Three people, including one person within DHS and two more familiar with the matter, confirmed that DOGE now has a presence at the agency. Two of those sources added that DOGE seems to have restarted conversations about the future of the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) program, which DHS has long hoped would replace the agency’s current biometrics database — the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), one of the world’s largest known systems of that kind. 

OBIM was created more than a decade ago to manage the biometric information used to make border security decisions. As a relatively small office, OBIM provides assistance to DHS and federal agencies, including the State Department. OBIM also sometimes exchanges biometrics with other countries. 

OBIM’s biometric database stores hundreds of millions of biometric data points. A DHS website notes that a single query of the system “can retrieve data for an individual tied to a Department of State visa application, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection log of an entry into the United States, and an immigration status change logged by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.”

DOGE has not directly accessed these systems, two of the sources believe. But one person within the agency noted that DOGE has recently been involved in a decision to request a memo about the future of HART, the IDENT system, and the Traveler Verification Service, a separate system run by Customs and Border Protection. The person said there was a recent meeting between OBIM, CBP, and DOGE about the future of these biometric systems. 

Two other people confirmed that DOGE is involved at OBIM and one of them confirmed that DOGE is interested in reevaluating the future of HART.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

The current IDENT system has been a workhorse of DHS’s biometrics program for decades. The system can run close to half a million queries a day, sometimes 150,000 in an hour, one person said. But the system’s configuration reveals its age: The IDENT system is physically stored on-premise, in two different locations. IDENT is also dependent on specific hardware to support its fingerprint matching technology, which the person said comes at a significant cost.

With more than 300 million identities stored, IDENT is now one of the largest biometric databases in the world. The world’s largest database is the Aadhaar system in India.

DHS has wanted to replace IDENT with HART, which is supposed to be hosted in the cloud and use a software-based approach to biometric matching. In the eyes of some government leaders, it’s a critical part of modernizing DHS’s approach to biometrics.

Still, the operation of HART has been controversial within the agency and the program has run into a series of challenges. 

In 2022, the program failed when an attempt was made to enter “parallel operations,” which would have seen HART deployed alongside IDENT to measure its performance, two people said. 

In 2023, the Government Accountability Office flagged that the program was running into problems with privacy issues, program management, and cost-tracking. The program is running several years behind and, according to the GAO, costs significantly more than originally anticipated.

In recent years, there was intense investment in getting the HART program back on track, a former senior DHS official told FedScoop. Management of the program was moved from the OBIM office to DHS’s Office of the Chief Information Officer in 2024. The program also saw a series of restructurings, with federal technical officials having a greater role in the process, the official said, and several vendors were brought on instead of just one. 

OBIM is currently aiming for HART to reach initial operating capacity in fiscal year 2027, a person within DHS said, adding that parallel operations between HART and IDENT are not currently feasible.