The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded Accenture Federal Services a 13-month, $71 million contract to add biometric modalities and other enhancements to the US-VISIT program. US-VISIT uses digital fingerprints and photographs. A pilot program included in the contract will test facial and iris voluntary identification enrollment and matching.

The UK Border Agency has announced intentions to require applicants applying for six-month stays from outside the European Economic Area to use biometric residency permits starting at the end of February 2012, according to an HR Magazine article.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology published a revised biometric standard that expands the type and amount of information that forensic scientists can share across their international networks to identify victims or solve crimes. Biometric data is a digital or analog representation of physical attributes that can be used to uniquely identify us.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wants to see a biometric scanning device that has Web-enabled communication and control that’s built on a publicly-available specification, reports Bank Info Security. To that end, it’s looking for proposals for such a device.