Traditionally, technology has been associated with  rationality,  objectivity and structure; traits oft considered  masculine in the  traditional societal definition of gender roles.  While some technologies  have largely been male-dominated, throughout  history, women have had an  often unrecognized presence in making  significant contributions to  these technological advancements. One such  technology would be the  digital computer. While its development is  generally viewed as a product  of male logic and rationality, much of  the progress in this area has  required an intuitive, interactive and  generally less structured  feminine approach. These culturally  appropriated gender  characteristics as well as historic gender roles  have had a significant  influence in consumerism and technological  development. In this  activity, you will explore technologies that may  be gender-specific and  evaluate technological innovations that have  shaped current society 

I have chosen Next Generation Biometrics Capture Capability (NXGBCC) as my project.

The Department of Defense (DoD) Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency (DFBA) is responsible for all matter regarding Biometrics. The Department of the Army and more specifically Program Manager Biometrics (PM Bio) manages the program of record (POR) to ensure training and equipment are function for military operations.  Biometrics are the unique personal physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, iris, DNA, that can be used for automation recognition (DHS, 2019). 

First a little history, in December of 2004 an Iraqi insurgent wearing an Iraqi security forces uniform was able to get into the U.S. military base in Mosul Iraq blowing himself up in the dining facility full of U.S. service personnel.  In total 14 U.S. service members, 4 U.S. civilians and 3 Iraqi Soldiers were killed in the incident (AP, 2005).  Since then the military has used Biometrics extensively to identify of personnel entering U.S. installations in the Middle East as well as all U.S. sponsored trained personnel working along U.S. and coalition forces. 

U.S. Forces also collect DNA and latent fingerprints from operational and forensics exploitation locations allowing to identify persons of interest (POI) operating against U.S. and Coalition partners.

Although biometrics mostly used for Intelligence gathering, screening, and force protection. One of the more important matters regarding the collection of Biometrics of non-U.S. individuals who interact with U.S. forces (Host Nation Soldiers, Police Officers, third country, and host nation nationals working at U.S. Bases) in the middle east is that the DoD shares the information with other federal agencies allowing for screening of all Middle Eastern personnel requesting Visas to enter the U.S.  This ensures that any persons who have acted against U.S. and coalition interest are prohibited from legally entering the U.S.

The current PM Biometrics systems that consist of the Biometrics Automated Toolset (BAT) have become antiquated and have reached their operational lifecycle.  Currently the BAT systems require a lot of manual loading of data and a long time in processing, analytical examination, comparisons and sharing with other U.S. agencies. Current civilian application of Biometrics has advance to the point that individuals who are persons of interest (POI) can be biometrically identified by the authorities within matter of minutes.  Appling these commercially advance to military operations would provide with identification of those that are good guys working for our forces and those who are working against us. can be identified within less than returning

SWOT

Strengths:

– Identifying persons of interest (POI)

– Positively Identifying U.S. Base workers

– Vetting host country nationals, Soldiers, police officers

– Force protection

Weakness:

– Old Biometrics systems

– Loading data is manual process

– Processing, analyzing and sharing data takes days

– Requires close proximity of subject to capture biometric or identify

Opportunities:

– New systems are commercially available

– Capabilities to capture biometrics at greater distances are currently available and improving – very fast

– Biometric standoff (at a distance) identification would provide protection to U.S. forces

– Sharing data with Federal agencies faster would identify persons of interest attempting to enter U.S.

– Sharing data with Allies could protect U.S. interest overseas

Threats:

– Bad guys trying to figure way to defeat Biometrics capabilities

– Slow processing of data could put U.S. forces in harms way

– Slow sharing of Data with U.S. Federal agencies could place U.S. homeland in harms way

The business area for this project would be Information Technology (IT) and Intelligence (Intel) gathering/analysis/operations/force protection. For the purpose of this class I plan on keeping this project in the (IT) business area.

Return on Investment (ROI): Although when insurance cost is taken into consideration, it may be possible to try to place a cost on a loss of a life.  It would be impractical and unwise to conduct an ROI when trying to determine the value of saved lives.  From a person who has lost fellow Soldiers and has had to talk to loved ones of lost family members I will say the ROI would be priceless.

The most challenging part of this project proposal is that I am actually working with the Product Manager (PdM) in trying to develop actual methodologies to evaluate the Next Generation Biometrics Capture Capabilities (NXGBCC) that would replace the current BAT systems.  I have worked in the Biometrics area for over 12 years so this will be a great opportunity to possibly identifying some new considerations for the capabilitys development documents (CDD) for the NXGBCC.

Reference:

Department of Homeland Security.  (2019, May 9).  Biometrics. Retrieved from https://www.dhs.gov/biometrics (Links to an external site.)

Associated Press.  (2005, August 19).  Details of Mosul mess hall bombing emerge.  NBCNEWS.  Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9013247/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/details-mosul-mess-hall-bombing-emerge/#.XiIqAi3MxhE (Links to an external site.)