National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) NextGen
Safety of Australians sector
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission
Tier 2
Project status - Active
Duration - 5 years
Delivery confidence - High
Investment - $40.2M | Digital ($40.2M)
The National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) NextGen is a pivotal tool for Australian law enforcement, providing a comprehensive fingerprint and palmprint matching capability.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) delivered the NAFIS NextGen project – an upgraded, fully supported system, with protected government cloud capability, advanced latent fingerprint processing and integration with partner agency systems.
Improved fingerprint and palmprint matching supports criminal investigations
The only national system of its kind in Australia, NAFIS NextGen is crucial for identifying individuals based on their prints. The system enables rapid upload of prints from crime scenes, supporting fast identification of suspects by matching crime scene evidence to persons of interest and identifying suspects in minutes.
The ACIC is also providing state-of-the-art interactive training, establishing a new international standard for fingerprint software training.
Searched more than 12,000 times every day, NAFIS NextGen has delivered early results such as:
- linking a recidivist drug offender, with a significant history of drug manufacturing, to 2 major unsolved crimes
- resolving an unsolved homicide
- identifying new cold case leads
- linking over 100 new suspects to previously unidentified fingerprints for a variety of offences.
Delivering the next generation of fingerprint identification
The ACIC project team partnered with international technology vendor IDEMIA and experienced NAFIS users from every partner agency nationwide. This allowed subject matter experts to play a pivotal role in how the system processes would work and strengthened relationships across jurisdictions. These relationships will continue, with cross-jurisdictional assistance to manage work and investigations.
Overall benefits of the system include:
- reduced operational costs for ACIC and partner agencies
- increased speed and efficiency of fingerprint and palmprint matching – helping to solve serious and everyday offences as well as cold cases
- more flexible information sharing among partner agencies including international partners
- improved security
- cutting-edge training, establishing a new international standard for fingerprint software training
- cross fingerprint matching between NAFIS and fingerprints captured at the border in the Department of Home Affairs’ Enterprise Biometric Identification Services.
NAFIS NextGen highlights the integration of technology in modern policing, providing a critical system for law enforcement agencies across Australia to help solve crime and keep the community safe.
‘Transitioning NAFIS to the cloud environment was the culmination of 5 years of work. This will simplify NAFIS infrastructure and allow the ACIC to scale NAFIS to meet our partners’ evolving needs into the future.’
Jeremy Johnson, Executive Director, Policing Information and Checking Services, ACIC
More information is available from The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission