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ID Solutions Announces Record-Setting Contract for Biometric Passport Issuance ID Solutions, LLC announces receipt of order and full payment from IRIS Smart Technologies of Nigeria for a complete biometric solution for the issuance of passports in the largest nation in Africa. Nigeria has approximately 140 million citizens and is a major political leader for both the Western African region and the entire African continent.The major features of this "e-Passport" solution are the utilization of fingerprints, processed by ID Solutions, to ensure that the objective of "one citizen, one passport" are met. Duplicate applications will be detected at very high levels of accuracy by ID Solutions and investigation and case resolution will be performed by Nigerian government authorities. Subsequent to the authorization of a passport to be issued to an individual known not to have applied in duplicate, the fingerprint information is encoded into a "smart card chip," and laminated into the passport in a non- tamperable way. At a point of access to a secure facility such as an airplane, the passport (chip) and live finger are compared so that the combination satisfies the objectives of (a) this person has only one identity (has not been issued multiple passports), and (b) this person is the person to whom this trusted credential has been issued. ID Solutions' contract developed as a follow-on to its very successful Nigeria Voters Registration contract in 2002 (under the name of Square One Solutions) wherein 68 million persons were enrolled for voter registration and very large amounts of voter multiple-registration detection were detected. The result was an election certified by the Independent Nigerian Election Commission Chairman, the Honorable Dr. Abel Guobadia, as being "greatly enhanced by ID Solutions' superior biometric performance." Dr. Guobadia went on to say that the contribution of ID Solutions to the overall voting and elections process is and will be a key element in promotion of democratic influences in Western Africa through controlled and fair elections. ID Solutions' immediate customer in the Nigerian Passport project is IRIS Smart Technologies Nigeria Ltd. (IST). IST CEO Mr. Olayinka Fisher stated that "Our thorough evaluation of the field of biometric vendors led us to ID Solutions, with their best-of-breed performance, field-tested in harsh environments, and world-leading cost/performance metrics. There's no alternative, in our opinion." ID Solutions' CEO Douglas Solomon commented that he is "gratified by this key and competitive win for IDS and excited by the revenue opportunity these projects provide for our company. I've challenged our management team to fulfill all contract deliverables to maximum value and on schedule." Accepting this challenge, IDS President Dr. John Schmitt commented that "I, and our top technical staff, will immediately re-situate to the Nigerian capital to define the full requirements for this program and its many follow- ons." Fisher and Solomon agreed that the Nigerian Passport and Voter's Role projects are the prototypes for all of Africa, and the team of IRIS, ID Solutions and its other partners are well-positioned to garner all of the new electronic Passport business in Africa, estimated to be in excess of US$1 billion. Specifics of the Nigerian Passport subcontracts are not disclosed but the program total is reported to be US$138 Million. ID Solutions' subcontract is for a Phase-One system to perform 10,000 searches per day (four fingers) against an enrolled database of 3 million persons, with speed in excess of 1,700,000 match operations per second. This is believed to be among the largest and most transaction-demanding system ever fielded, and again establishes ID Solutions in this unique space. |