Sunday Gazette-Mail

Bush budget boosts biometrics business

February 9, 2003
By Martyn Chase

When President Bush sent his budget request to Congress last week, nearly all the news for West Virginia looked negative.

The state suffered a series of potentially devastating cuts, including a proposal that would slash funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission in half, significant reductions in coal mine cleanup programs and the probable elimination of two measures benefiting steel producers, among others.

Less noticed and buried deep in the budget were items, which promise to provide a major boost for work on biometrics in the high-tech corridor along Interstate 79 and at West Virginia University.

What's behind this is a sweeping move by the administration to establish a national identification system based on biometrics.

Biometrics is seen as a crucial tool in the war on terrorism. It provides positive identification based on physical characteristics, including fingerprints, eye scans, facial features, voice patterns and the like.

Leading edge biometrics work is being done by government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Department, and dozens of firms along the I-79 corridor around Fairmont and Clarksburg as well as at WVU.

The emerging high-tech center there aims to become the "Silicon Valley" for federal government work on biometrics. Officials at the West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation and at affected companies are convinced this is already happening.

"The security concerns and the need for positive identification is what's driving both industry and government down this road," said Roger Duckworth, vice president of research and development at the WVHTC Foundation. "Biometrics is really the only thing that guarantees that only a specific person can gain entry to a facility."

Already, the trend in biometrics is clear. Hand scanners are used by surgeons entering operating rooms at Charleston Area Medical Center and by students entering dormitories at WVU.

In the not-too-distant future, they will be the norm at entrances to large industrial facilities, including nuclear power plants, in airports and at the entry ports along the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico.

For businesses here, there are two levels of activity to watch , according to Duckworth.

First, there are opportunities for companies that actually make the devices, which read thumbprints or scan eyes, for example. Beyond that, there are greater opportunities for software firms working on the 'enterprise solutions' being developed to hook these biometric devices into databases.

"Enterprise solutions are a pretty common skill among many of our companies" along the high tech corridor, Duckworth said.

"These companies with highly skilled workers who are able to do big pieces" of the work on plugging the biometric devices into federal and company databases.

In terms of the federal budget proposals on biometrics, some work is classified and not publicly disclosed. There are funds earmarked for the Defense Department's biometric management office, which has close ties to the Biometric Fusion Center in Harrison County.

Duckworth and Trevor Prout, director of marketing at the International Biometric Group, pointed to $3.5 million in the budget for the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, to develop and certify a biometrics standard, which can be used to positively identify those applying for visas or seeking to enter the country.

Beyond that there is $500 million in the budget request for the Homeland Security Department targeted to protect the country's infrastructure, including power plants, water facilities and telecommunications networks.

There's also $50 million for use of biometrics in identifying truck drivers who regularly drive across the borders with Mexico and Canada.

Thanks to the foresight of those who saw the need for high tech development in north central West Virginia, the state will get an important piece of this action.