SBEC Fingerprinting Process Update

By Doug Phillips, Director of Investigations/Fingerprinting, State Board for Educator Certification

As many of you know, the Department of Public Safety (DPS) has entered into a contract with a private vendor (Identix) to provide a digital fingerprinting service to those individuals who require fingerprinting for state licensing purposes in Texas.  This includes applicants for educator credentials. Statewide implementation of the program, known as Fingerprint Applicant Services of Texas (FAST), was launched June 7. We wish to seek your help in encouraging educator applicants to use this new service. 

Since October 1, 2003, new applicants for educator credentials have been required to submit fingerprints to the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) so that the FBI can conduct a national criminal background check.  The vast majority of these fingerprints have been in the form of the conventional inked and rolled method, and are routed to DPS and the FBI through SBEC.  There have been many problems associated with this process that center on the quality of the prints obtained by this method (a rejection rate for quality of 25%) and cards being lost in the mail.  These delays have caused numerous problems for all parties involved.  It is our belief that by utilizing the DPS’ contractor (Identix), the fingerprint process will vastly improve, resulting in a much shorter amount of time required for an applicant to complete the fingerprinting process.

A few facts about the new process:

1. SBEC cannot require that an applicant use the DPS vendor, but strongly encourages them to do so.
2. SBEC will require all applicants who choose to use the vendor to pay their fingerprinting fees ($47) online as opposed to mailing in their payment.
3. The applicant will be required to pay their fingerprinting fees (online) prior to using the vendor’s digital services.
4. The applicant will receive an email from SBEC that contains a document (FAST pass) that allows them to use the vendor’s digital services.
5. The applicant will be required to make an appointment with the vendor and present the document (FAST pass) at their fingerprint appointment.
6. Applicants will be required to pay the vendor a separate fee of $9.95 for the fingerprinting service.
7. The rejection rate guaranteed by the vendor is 2% as opposed to the 25% rejection rate for inked and rolled prints.
8. The average turnaround time for completion of the digital fingerprint process is approximately 5 days as compared to the average turnaround time of two weeks currently being experienced by the Fingerprint Division for inked and rolled fingerprints.
9. The service is offered at over 30 sites statewide as of October 25, 2006, with additional sites anticipated. 

You can find answers to frequently asked questions here.

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