Identity/biometrics/technology marketing and writing services
When a Request for Proposal includes mandatory criteria, all bidders should meet them. If you don’t, you won’t win. (Usually.)
But what about a Request for Information?
In that case some latitude is possible. Tell the agency what you do, what you could do, and what you can’t or won’t do.
But if you can’t perform ANYTHING the RFI requests, no point in submitting a response.
Remember my February 16 post “Notice ID 70RDA126RFI000003: Yes, It’s an RFI, But That May Be a HUGE Multi-Biometric Matching System”? Note that I used the words “RFI” and “May,” because it’s not a done deal.
When Biometric Update reported on this same RFI, it used similar qualifiers such as “If DHS proceeds to a formal solicitation.”
WIRED? Not so restrained.
“THE DEPARTMENT OF Homeland Security is moving to consolidate its face recognition and other biometric technologies into a single system capable of comparing faces, fingerprints, iris scans, and other identifiers collected across its enforcement agencies, according to records reviewed by WIRED.”
But those very “records reviewed by WIRED” include this statement:
“This RFI is for planning purposes only and shall not be construed as an obligation on the part of the Government. This is NOT a Request for Quotations or Proposals. No solicitation document exists, and a formal solicitation may or may not be issued by the Government as a result of the responses received to this RFI.”
And even if this actually WAS a true procurement…HART was originally announced during the Obama administration in 2016. Ten years later, it still hasn’t happened.
An interesting Request for Information (Notice ID 70RDA126RFI000003) for a multi-biometric matching system was posted on SAM.gov on Friday, and it’s turning some heads. But is YOUR organization reading an RFI that is turning YOUR heads?
Bear in mind that this is a Request for INFORMATION, not a Request for PROPOSAL. And this is made clear in the document:
“This RFI is for planning purposes only and shall not be construed as an obligation on the part of the Government. This is NOT a Request for Quotations or Proposals. No solicitation document exists, and a formal solicitation may or may not be issued by the Government as a result of the responses received to this RFI.”
Now I could get into the…um…minutiae of the request for information about a biometric matching system, the requirements for everything from presentation attack detection to on-premise/hybrid/cloud deployments, and a host of other things.
But in this case, the business requirements outweigh the technical requirements…by a LONG shot.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seeking an enterprise-wide, scalable, and secure biometric matching software solution to support mission-critical identity verification, vetting, and investigative operations across all DHS Components, including CBP, ICE, TSA, USCIS, USSS, and Headquarters. The contractor will provide a DHS-wide enterprise license for multi-modal biometric matching software, along with all associated services, integration support, maintenance, and technical assistance necessary for full operational deployment.”
And in the next section:
“DHS is looking to acquire an enterprise-wide biometric matching software solution, including all licenses, services, and technical support necessary to enable seamless integration with all DHS biometric systems.”
Matching for ALL DHS components, and integration with ALL DHS biometric systems. This could just be a teeny system for limited operations…or it could be a super system. Since they’re asking about scalability, potential respondents should probably assume the latter.
So we’re talking loads of money.
Of course it could be scaled way down when or if a final RFP comes along. And maybe the vast expanse of the RFI is merely designed to get system integrators to drool.
But where does this leave the IDENT/HART battles?
Incidentally, Bredemarket offers proposal services to assist identity/biometric vendors in RFI and RFP responses such as this one. Over the years my proposals have won over $50 million in business. Presumably the respondents to this RFI have full proposal staffs (or maybe not), but if YOUR organization requires RFI and RFP assistance, schedule a meeting with Bredemarket.
(2/17/2026: See Anthony Kimery’s assessment of the RFI here.)
An interesting item popped up in SAM.gov. According to a Request for Information (RFI) due February 20, the FBI may have interest in a system for secret biometric searches.
“The FBI intends to identify available software solutions to store and search subjects at the classified level. This solution is not intended to replace the Next Generation Identification System Functionality, which was developed and implemented in collaboration with the FBI’s federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial partners. The solution shall reside at the Secret and/or Top-Secret/SCI level with the ability to support data feeds from external systems. The solution must allow the ability to enroll and search face, fingerprint, palmprint, iris, and latent fingerprints, and associated biographic information with a given set of biometrics.”
Now remember that the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is protected from public access by requiring all users to adhere to the CJIS Security Requirements. But the CJIS Security Requirements aren’t Secret or Top Secret. These biometric searches, whatever they are, must REALLY be kept from prying eyes.
The RFI itself is 8 pages long, and is mysteriously numbered as RFI 01302025. I would have expected an RFI number 01152026. I believe this was an editing error, since FBI RFI 01302025 was issued in 2025 for a completely different purpose.
Whatever the real number is, the RFI is labeled “Classified Identity-Based Biometric System.” No acronym was specified, so I’m self-acronyming it as CIBS. Perhaps the system has a real acronym…but it’s secret.
If your company can support such a system from a business, technical, and security perspective, the due date is February 20 and questions are due by February 2. See SAM.gov for details.
Have you ever used the phrase “weasel word”? Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines it:
“a word used in order to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright statement or position”
I don’t know how weasels became the subject of a negative phrase like this, but here we are.
I learned the phrase “weasel word” when I started working in proposals. I’ve been writing proposals for nearly 15 years, and I’ve run into many cases where I don’t comply with the written word of a mandatory requirement, and I end up having to…evade or retreat.
I’ve adopted my share of favorite weasel words over the years. I’m not going to give away any of my secrets in this public forum, but you’ve probably heard me rant about the government weasel wording regarding REAL ID “enforcement”:
“This rule ensures that Federal agencies have appropriate flexibility to implement the card-based enforcement provisions of the REAL ID regulations after the May 7, 2025, enforcement deadline by explicitly permitting agencies to implement these provisions in phases….The rule also requires agencies to coordinate their plans with DHS, make the plans publicly available, and achieve full enforcement by May 5, 2027.”
As I have ranted repeatedly, the REAL ID enforcement DEADLINE is May 7, 2025, but FULL enforcement will be achieved by May 5, 2027. There are enough weasel words to distract from the fact that full enforcement is not taking place on May 7, 2025.
“Flexibility,” “implement in phases”…I’m taking notes. The next time I respond to a DHS RFI, I may use some of these.
Because Bredemarket does respond to Requests for Information, Requests for Proposal, and similar documents. One of Bredemarket’s clients recently received an award, with possible lucrative add-on work in the future.
Does your identity/biometric or technology conpany want the government to give you money? I can help. Talk to me: https://bredemarket.com/cpa/
(Weasel picture Keven Law • CC BY-SA 2.0; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mustela_nivalis_-British_Wildlife_Centre-4.jpg)
Facial recognition firms, let’s talk about Requests for Information from the Department of Homeland Security. I wrote about one in 2021, so I figured I’d write about another one that was just published today.
But before I do, let me just say that…um…I’m experienced in responding to Requests for Information (RFIs) from the Department of Homeland Security…and that’s all I can say.
And this new RFI is intriguing.
The RFI with Notice ID RFI-LVPZTPCD was issued by U.S Customs and Border Protection today (April 30) and is due in one month (May 30). The description includes the following:
“CBP is seeking a solution for capturing facial images of vehicle occupants in an officer-manned primary zone at an inbound vehicle point of entry (POE).”
Today’s CBP RFI-LVPZTPCD envisions the use case in which people are entering the U.S. in a car…and are NOT getting out of the car. But you still have to capture their faces at a sufficient quality level, which is easier said than done. Heck, in May 2022 it took me several tries to capture a passport facial image at CVS when I WASN’T in a car. Now add distance, odd camera angles, and possibly an intervening car windshield, and you’re in for big challenges.
I wonder how many facial recognition vendors are planning to respond to this RFI…and how many need the experienced proposal help that Bredemarket can provide.
Of course, there are other facial recognition firms out there, some of which may have outstanding solutions to the CBP’s problem.
And in case you haven’t heard, Bredemarket has an opening for a facial recognition client, and can provide winning proposal development services.
So if I can help your facial recognition firm respond to this RFI, book a call: https://bredemarket.com/cpa/
(San Ysidro Port of Entry picture by Philkon (Phil Konstantin) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15343509.)
(All images Imagen 3)
From the early 1990s to 2019, the majority of my identity/biometric proposal work was with U.S. state and local agencies, with some work with foreign agencies (such as Canada’s RCMP), private entities, and a few proposals to U.S. federal agencies.
I had no idea what was going to happen in 2020, and one of the surprises is that the majority of my identity/biometric proposal work since 2020 has been with U.S. federal agencies. Many requests for information (RFIs) as well as other responses.
The L&M does stop at Bredemarket, apparently.
I’ve worked on client proposals (and Bredemarket’s own responses) to the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and perhaps some others along the way.
Coincidentally, the two most recent identity/biometric proposals I managed for Bredemarket clients went to the same government department. But that’s where the similarities ended.
The first required an e-mail submission of a PDF (10 pages maximum) to two email addresses. A relative piece of cake.
The last required an online submission. No, not a simple upload of a PDF to a government website. While my client did have to upload 2 PDFs, the majority of the submission required my client to complete a bunch of online screens.
And there were two separate sets of instructions regarding how to complete these online screens…which contradicted each other. So I had to ask a clarification question…and you know how THAT can go.
Oh, and as the consulting proposal expert, I could not complete the online screens on behalf of the client. The client’s company had a single login, which was assigned to a single person (a company executive) and could NOT be used by anybody else.
So on the day of proposal submission the executive and I videoconferenced, and I watched as the executive answered the responses, in part using a document in which I had drafted responses.
And of course things were not perfect. The executive pasted one of my responses into the space provided, and only THEN did we discover that the response had an unadvertised character limit. So I rewrote it…at the same time that I resized a required image with unadvertised dimension restrictions.
Perhaps if I had written more federal proposals at Printrak, Motorola, MorphoTrak, IDEMIA, and Incode, I would have known these things. Perhaps not; as late as 2014 I was still printing proposals on paper and submitting 10 or more volumes of binders (yes, binders) along with CDs that had to be virus-checked.
But regardless of whether you submit proposals online, via CD, or in paper volumes, some things remain constant.
If you need Bredemarket’s proposal services, or my content or analysis services, visit my “CPA” page to get started.
My biometric/identity collateral wasn’t the only thing that I updated yesterday.
As part of my preparation for yesterday evening’s Ontario IDEA Exchange meeting, I took the time to update my “local” brochure. (Because local is important: see the first of my three goals for 2022.) This brochure includes a section that discusses the types and numbers of pieces that I have prepared for clients, including the number of case studies, the number of RFx responses, and so forth.
Those numbers hadn’t been updated since last September.
Before going to the meeting, I wanted to make sure my “local” brochure had the latest numbers.
I’ll go ahead and share them with you. This covers the projects that Bredemarket has completed for clients over the last 18 months, as of February 16, 2022:
As it turns out, I didn’t hand out my local brochure to anyone at last night’s IDEA Exchange. (It was a small crowd, most of whom I already knew.)
But at least I’ve tabulated the numbers.
Now I just have to update all of my NON local collateral…
I was looking over the Bredemarket blog posts for September, and I found some posts that addressed the proposal side of Bredemarket’s services. (There are also blog posts that address the content side; see here for a summary of those posts.)
As a starting point, what proposal services has Bredemarket provided for its clients? I quantified these around the middle of the month and came up with this list.
And I’ve been working on additional proposal projects for clients that I haven’t added to the list yet.
Now if you’ve already read my September 2021 content post, it seems like I’ve been repeating myself. Well the repetition ends here, because my other big proposal-related accomplishment for the month was my Association of Proposal Management Professionals Foundation certification.
This will not only allow me to provide better proposal services to biometric firms (yes, yes, I am a biometric proposal writing expert), but also to other firms.
What other firms?
I’ll let you know.
If I can provide proposal services for you:
Bredemarket’s slogan should be “better late than never.” It took me a year to print business cards, and it has taken me almost a year to quantify my proposal services work for clients. But Toggl helped me quantify my work.
Incidentally, this post is NOT sponsored by Toggl. If I were smart I would have pitched this post to Toggl and gotten something substantive in return. But I’m not that smart; I’m just a happy Toggl Track user. Sure the service has had a couple of hiccups in April and August, but Toggl responded to these hiccups quickly. In general, Toggl Track has been very useful in tracking time, gathering data to bill clients, and (as I just discovered this week) very useful in quantifying Bredemarket’s work and accomplishments.
The whole Toggl Track quantification exercise started over the last couple of weeks, when I had two separate discussions with firms regarding the number of hours that a contractor usually spends responding to a request for something (proposal, information, comment, etc.). Acronym lovers can use RFx, RFP, RFI, RFC, etc. as needed.
After the second client raised the issue, I realized that my Toggl Track data contained time data on all of my billable proposals work. (Helpful hint: even with the free version of Toggl Track, you can set up project names to keep track of billable hours, although you have to manually calculate the billing yourself.)
So I logged into Toggl Track, selected the billable projects that I knew had Rfx hours, downloaded a comma-separated values (csv) version of all of the data from January 1, 2021 to present, opened the csv file in Excel, filtered out the columns that I didn’t need, filtered out the rows that didn’t pertain to RFx work, sorted the data by description (for example, “AFIS proposal for Noname County”), then subtotaled the hours at each change of description.
And then I realized that I did something wrong.
When the Toggl Track data was loaded into Excel, it used a standard hours-minutes-seconds format. What that meant was that the subtotals also displayed in a standard hours-minutes-seconds format. So if I had three time entries—one for 10:00:00, one for 9:00:00, and one for 8:00:00—the resulting subtotal would be 3:00:00, or only three hours.
Whoops.
I played around a bit with the number formats in the Duration column, and found a format (displayed in Excel as “37:30:55”) that correctly rendered my subtotals—in the example above, yielding the correct value of 27:00:00, or 27 hours.
So once I got the subtotals to work correctly, what did I find, based on my own RFx proposal work data?
Obviously my results do not apply to other independent contractors, and certainly do not apply to employees who are involved much more intimately in a company’s proposal process. So don’t try to extrapolate my numbers and make the declaration “Studies show that nearly half of all RFx responses require over 35 hours of work per person.”
But this data gave me the information that I needed in my discussions with the second firm.
But this exercise raised another question that I should have answered long ago.
As Bredemarket, I have not only worked on RFx responses, but have also worked on sole source responses, and on proposal templates.
But I’ve never compiled a definitive overview of all of my proposal work.
Now I’ve certainly discussed bits of my proposal work here and there. You’ve probably already seen the testimonial that I received from a client regarding my proposal template work:
“I just wanted to truly say thank you for putting these templates together. I worked on this…last week and it was extremely simple to use and I thought really provided a professional advantage and tool to give the customer….TRULY THANK YOU!”
But after the proposal hours exercise above, I decided that it was time to quantify this work.
Obviously I had all the data; I just had to pull it together.
So I went to Toggl Track (and to other sources) to quantify my total proposal work, searching for billable (and in the cases of Bredemarket’s own proposals, nonbillable) work and identifying all the projects.
Once that was done, I was able to create a neat handy dandy summary.
Which I put into a brochure.
Which I then added to various pages on the Bredemarket website.
And, of course, I’ll share the information in this blog post when I publish it and distribute it via my social media outlets-not forgetting Instagram, of course. (Did you notice that my statistical graphic is square? Now you know why.)
And I need to share this information in one more place, but that’s a topic for another time.
If my experience (now with better quantification!) can help you with your proposal work, then please contact me.