As you may be aware, background check services are centrally managed for all commonwealth agencies, including the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE).

To avoid potential disruptions to your staffing and volunteer efforts, PDE makes every effort to communicate changes to this system with local education agencies. As such, this email is to inform you that next month, a new contract supplier, Idemia (formerly MorphoTrust USA, LLC), will take over the fingerprinting services contract formerly held by Gemalto (formerly Cogent).

While individuals who are required to provide their fingerprints to complete a federal criminal background check for employment should have an easier time navigating and completing the process thanks to the selection of a new supplier of Digital Fingerprint & Electronic Federal Criminal Background Check Services, there will be a delay in fingerprint services during the transition.

This delay will occur between November 18, 2017 and November 28, 2017.

Individuals who are not registered and fingerprinted before November 18 will have to wait until November 28 to receive those services through the new provider. The only exceptions that will be made during that timeframe will be for individuals who have an issue with a fingerprint taken prior to November 18 and will be reprinted by November 27. Those individuals who do not get their reprint by November 27 will need to re-register with the new provider and will have 90 days to get their reprint at no cost.

NOTE: Under the Digital Fingerprint contract, MorphoTrust is to provide sufficient fingerprinting locations throughout the commonwealth so that no applicant will have to travel more than 25 miles to be fingerprinted.  MorphoTrust and the Department of General Services have developed a roll-out schedule for 75 public center fingerprint locations, which will be complete by the end of November/first week of December. To find a site, visit https://www.identogo.com/locations/pennsylvania. This map will continue to be updated.

For FAQs or additional information on fingerprinting services, locations or scheduling an appointment, applicants are encouraged to visit the Idemia supplier website at https://www.identogo.com/locations/pennsylvania or https://uenroll.identogo.com/.

PDE apologizes for any inconvenience caused and is committed to supporting you. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.