- Kable, Thursday 27 August 2009 00.05 BST
It has issued a tender notice in the Official Journal of the European Union for a framework agreement for the provision, support and integration of hand held mobile identification units (MIUs).
The notice says these must be capable of reading the information on the microchips and machine readable zones of passports, bank cards, identity cards, credit cards and other identification documents, along with either fingerprints, facial recognition or iris recognition.
The MIUs should also be capable of securely transferring data across a police gateway.
The agreement, which will last three years with an option to extend for a further two, will also be open to other police forces in the UK.
The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) already has a tender for MIUs open under the Midas programme, although in this case the units are only required to read fingerprints. The programme has been hit by delays due to concerns over network security.
Philippe Martin, a senior analyst at Kable, commented: "This announcement may signal the end of the Midas project in its current form. The procurement of the projects has suffered delays and it would seem inappropriate now for the NPIA to continue with it if the Met Police is looking at a much more sophisticated system.
"Once the contract is awarded, however, the Met Police could hand over the management of the project to the NPIA, which would help the implementation by other police forces."
