Thales delivers e-passport system in Uzbekistan with Oberthur Technologies

Thales, in cooperation with Oberthur Technologies has announced its participation in the Uzbekistan e-passport management system project.

According to the company, Oberthur Technologies, the prime contractor of this project, selected Thales to deliver the system for the Republic of Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Finance.

Reported previously, Oberthur has also closely assisted the Uzbek government in the upgrade of its infrastructures to facilitate passport production.

For this project, Thales has supplied 411 biometric data acquisition stations at locations throughout the republic and at its embassies worldwide. The group is also responsible for the centralized system that monitors passport applications and manages passport issuance. Currently, this system is in place at 56 separate border posts.

“Our partnership with Oberthur Technologies has been a real success because it has enabled us to combine our complementary technologies and commercial coverage to provide Uzbekistan with a complete, turnkey solution for the management of secure identity documents,” Dominique Gaiardo, Vice President in charge of Thales’s Protection Systems business said. “The contract is also a key reference in the border control market.”

In addition to this most recent project in Uzbekistan, Thales has assisted the French government in the production of national identity cards for over 17 years. In 2010, the company signed a contract with the French Ministry of the Interior to deploy a biometric enrolment and data transmission system to handle Schenghen visa applications in several countries.

According to a SecureIDNews report from 2012, 93 out of 193 U.N member states were issuing e-passports at the time, with 21 additional countries ready to deploy the technology in the next 2 years. Uzbekistan is one of the latest to join this growing list.

Article Topics

epassport  |  Oberthur Technologies  |  Thales