Working within the the UK Passport Service, Immigration and Nationality Directorate, and the Police Information Technology Organisation 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.

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 UK Passport Service expects to issue biometric passports and potentially passport cards from 2005 - perhaps in conjunction with new driving licence and national entitlement/identity cards, pending government decisions.

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.