Australian Federal Government agency Crim Trac will start the search this week for cutting edge technology that has the potential to recognise not only fingerprints, but faces, palm prints, speech and scars, marks and tattoos.
The agency is hunting a market-leading system that gives law enforcement agencies the edge in the fight against crime.
Potential new capabilities will be subject to a rigorous scrutiny in the search to upgrade Australia’s existing fingerprint identification services.
Currently the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) is the only national capability that provides police agencies with access to fingerprint data.
The search for a replacement system has been designed to ensure Australia is at the cutting edge of identification practices, particularly the speed at which we can match latent finger and palm prints found at crime scenes.
During the search, Crim Trac will look at how Australia can integrate and converge existing models and processes as it develops requirements for the new capability.
Consideration will also be given to expanding the type of data collected to allow police to match evidence to both suspects and crimes.
Modern policing demands IT capability that can easily assist in greater and faster collection of evidence, which can be accessed nationwide.
CrimTrac, which is the Australian Government agency responsible for delivering national information sharing services between state, territory and federal police agencies, will aim to replace the NAFIS by 2017.
This is part of a range of measures the Coalition Government has introduced to make Australia safer and more secure.
Most recently, the Government announced $3.3million for CrimTrac to develop and test a prototype for a National Domestic Violence Order (DVO) Scheme, to strengthen the identification and enforcement of DVOs across state and territory borders.
