Unisys & Australia Passports
Australia Passports Speeding Movement through Airports and Boosting Security
Imagine it.

Strengthening border protection, reducing identity fraud and expediting airport arrivals with state-of-the-art technology.

Done.

Australia Passports is tracking to be the first country to use facial biometric technology in passports — and thus the first to comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO’s) adoption of such technology as the worldwide standard for biometric-enhanced travel documents.

Secure Business Operation

Border protection

 

Innovation Metrics

With ePassport, Australia Passports is reducing the incidence of identify theft – a crime which costs an estimated $1.1 billion per year. At the same time, they’re delivering increased citizen safety and expedited service to the 20 million inhabitants of Australia.

 

Boosting security

With an overriding goal of providing a secure, efficient and accessible passport service to Australian citizens, Australia Passports — a Branch within the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT) — is continuously seeking ways to more effectively meet that goal. Given the fact that Australia Passports issues more than one million passports per year, the “security” aspect of the organization’s goal is particularly challenging. That’s why, for the past six years, Australia Passports has been collecting digital copies of passport photographs in a database that is being used to test face recognition technology.

 

Alexander Downer, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, explains how the biometric passports will work: “Under the proposed system, a person’s passport photo will be used to create a detailed electronic portrait of their face. The portrait will be stored on a tamper-proof microchip inside the passport. A computer will then compare this electronic portrait to the face of the person presenting a passport at an airport.”

 

“The use of biometric-enhanced passports should speed up movements through airport controls, boost aviation security and curtail identity theft,” continues Downer.  “It should also prove invaluable in the fight against terrorism, people smuggling and other transnational crimes.”

 

Reliable technology

Recognizing the need for technological expertise in producing its biometric passport system, Australia Passports called on Unisys for support in researching the technology and developing the system. Having provided research and development support for facial recognition technology to the U.S. Department of Defense, Unisys joined the effort with applicable experience already in hand. 

 

Together, Australia Passports and Unisys tested various facial recognition software packages. Upon selecting Cognitec and Identix as the top two providers of facial recognition technology, Unisys and Australia Passports then worked with them to enhance their technologies for the Australian application. Subsequently, an electronic passport was developed, which entailed establishing parameters such as which data to include; how much data to include, and in what format; how much the data could be compressed; and what the requirements would be for global interoperability.

 

Australia Passports and Unisys tested smart chips to be embedded in passports with all the necessary data regarding the passport holders, including photographs, and digital signatures to protect the data against tampering.

 

The outcome of the research and development project was to show the world community that face recognition matching could detect identity fraud, that biometric identifiers could be stored in passports in a globally interoperable manner, and that facial recognition was a viable technology to tie passport holders to their passports.

 

Success in proving the concept has led to Australia being the first country in the world to pilot biometric ePassports with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

 

Passports Branch Assistant Secretary, Bob Nash, says of the project, “We wanted a system that would enable us to tackle identity fraud head-on. And we wanted it quickly. We were also keen to work with the border control authorities in Australia and to meet the new entry requirements in the United States. Unisys helped us with the research and development and enabled us to undertake large-scale testing of facial recognition technology.”

 

Reducing crime and enhancing service

As biometric passports move beyond the prototype stage, Australia Passports and associated organizations are anticipating numerous benefits — among them, enhanced security. Chris Ellison, Australia’s Minister for Justice and Customs, remarks that “The use of biometric identifiers will strengthen border protection through more stringent passport verification processes and will reduce the risk of passport fraud. The possibility of terrorists and other criminals using fraudulently obtained Australian passports to enter Australia will be substantially reduced.”

 

Maintaining a high level of customer service while ensuring that each person receives only one passport for one proven identity will be the major plus. Australia already has one of the fastest processing times in the world for issuing passports, with an average turnaround time of well under 10 days and the ability for same-day processing for urgent requirements. With the biometric-enabled system, Australia Passports staff can be just as responsive without having to face the impossible task of visually checking each passport photograph against a database of 10 million images — fraud prevention is inherent in the system.


Customer at a Glance

Australian Passports

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