Central civil government - Home Office departments

About the Project

Through the Home Office, asylum seekers are already being issued with Application Registration Cards which include biometric information in the form of fingerprints. This will help to address the problem of verifying identity where an individual enters the country without any official documents, such as passports, and where those they have may not be genuine.

Fingerprints can then be checked against UK and EU databases, including police systems, to help combat illegal or fraudulent asylum applications, or those overstaying their visa periods.

With the USA introducing similar requirements for all visitors, such activity helps to illustrate the immediacy of the requirement for global uptake of biometrics within personal documents.

The Approach

AMTEC Consulting, and partners Emerging Technology Services and Consult Hyperion, worked together to establish the feasibility of using biometric information and smart cards in a range of verification and entitlement applications.

Working within the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (now the UK Border Agency) and the Police Information Technology Organisation (now the National Policing Improvement Agency), and interacting across other government departments, such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, AMTEC has been supporting the establishment and coordination of approaches to the use of biometrics and underlying card technologies.

AMTEC's work within these organisations has included the development of UK standards, strategy, business case and implementation plans. In addition, AMTEC has developed 'roadmaps' for the feasibility, introduction and use of biometrics, considering local and international initiatives and issues such as technology maturity, integration capabilities, together with backwards compatibility with developing countries.