US Army Wants to Put Facial Recognition in Daycare Centers

The U.S. Army wants to use facial recognition and advanced machine learning algorithms to monitor kids at base Children Development Centers and plans to launch a pilot program at Fort Jackson in the near future.

Army contracting officers posted a solicitation to SAM.gov for a vendor capable of developing a facial recognition and video analytics system and integrating that with the Fort Jackson CDC’s closed-circuit television system.

If successful, the system will be used for “monitoring the health and well-being of children in the CDC,” according to the performance work statement.

“The use of close-circuit television video-recording is common in CDCs for security purposes, however these feeds are not continually monitored during all hours of operation in live time,” the solicitation notes. “Instead, CDC staff log scheduled hours by watching the live video feeds periodically throughout the day for the mandated metrics.”

The center is hoping adding video analytics to the CCTV system will allow for continuous monitoring of students, “used as an addition to the human CCTV monitoring,” and capable of automatically alerting staff to situations as they arise.

The current contract opportunity is to pilot such a system at the Scales Avenue CDC at Fort Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina, “to demonstrate success or failure for implementing commercially available video analytics and other artificial intelligence approaches to existing camera systems,” the solicitation states.

“The intent is to acquire results and relevant data to analyze the ability of video analytics to improve service member and family quality of life, reduce base costs and enhance mission readiness,” the solicitation states. “The system design shall integrate with existing Army CDC systems, demonstrate technology capabilities and provide a business case assessment.”

The performance work statement details the existing systems with which the new tools will have to be integrated, as well as the privacy and cybersecurity standards the tools and contractors will have to meet.

That said, the new system will not have to get its own authority to operate, or ATO—a designation certifying a system meets a minimal cybersecurity standard before being deployed. Army officials plan to use the existing system’s ATO, with an Interconnection Agreement to certify the security between systems.

The contract is expected to run for one year, with the preliminary designs due within the first four months. The new system will be installed and tested operationally within eight months, according to the schedule included in the solicitation.

Responses to the request for quotes are due by noon Sept. 10.