A meeting of 28 agencies late last month produced three areas of agreement on governmentwide biometric policy, said John D. Woodward Jr., director of the Defense Department's Biometrics Management Office.
To speed up agency consensus, the office is working with Fernando Podio, biometric standards program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Brad Wing, technical standards director of the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology program.
DOD already mandates military compliance with an international standard for transmission and storage of fingerprint data from detainees and foreign persons of interest, Woodward said.
He said the 72 agency participants agreed on the need for a government-wide policy to require biometric data sharing, the need for governmentwide biometric standards and the need for product conformance test suites.