Vying for VISIT

The much-anticipated US VISIT program to track every foreigner crossing American borders will begin revving up at the end of the year. For the first several months, VISIT will rely on existing government systems at ports of entry to take fingerprints and photographs of 35 million annual visitors. But by May 2004, the Homeland Security Department plans to award a contract to one company that will ensure a new system is operating at every border crossing and all air and seaports by the end of 2005.

The presumed leaders of the pack for the multi-billion-dollar VISIT contract are among the usual suspects for massive government tech projects. Teams forming now led by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Computer Sciences Corp. are the favorites. AT&T and Accenture also are in the running.

The smaller IT and biometrics firms whose technology will make up the backbone of the project are busy sizing up the tech titans and courting the ones they think have the best shot at winning.

Past experience puts the big firms in a sweet spot. Lockheed manages the integration of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's fingerprint identification system with one housed at the FBI. Northrop Grumman has built a demonstration center for new homeland security products that has attracted considerable buzz among smaller firms. And CSC is already working for Homeland Security under the successor to an INS technology services contract.

But the smaller firms may be the big winners. Even a small share of the contract could eclipse their current annual revenues. One shoo-in for VISIT already has emerged-Identix of Minnetonka, Minn., the only company that makes mobile biometric readers that scan two fingerprints. VISIT will start out taking two fingerprints, and readers will need to be hand-carried in some cases, particularly to ships at sea so passengers can be scanned before they disembark.

Identix Chief Executive Officer Joseph Attick has analyzed the project's vast scope. Attick believes there are 288 million border crossings by foreigners every year. The government also will track exits, and Attick presumes the same number will leave. Thus, VISIT will process nearly 600 million transactions every year, a number Attick calls "phenomenal."