UK Home Office finds kiosks close, mobile getting there for biometrics self-enrollment

The UK Home Office says that biometric self-enrollment of face and fingerprint biometrics works better at this point on kiosks than on mobile devices, based on the results of feasibility trials it conducted last year for immigration vetting.

Home Office conducted trials from November 29 to December 22, 2021, and found that both kiosks and mobile devices need further development to meets its requirements. The facial recognition and presentation attack detection technologies used in the Home Office’s EU Settlement Scheme app were found to have been effective. The usability of fingerprint biometrics capturing and PAD technologies on mobile devices, however, must be further improved.

The next phase of the feasibility trials will also consist of pilots of a self-service kiosk and a mobile app.

Blue Biometrics, FaceTec, Gambit, GBG, Idemia, NEC subsidiary Northgate Public Services, Regula Forensics, Spidx, Teleperformance Contact, Trust Stamp, Thales, Unisys, Veridium, and VFS Global were all revealed as technology partners for the initial trial in a privacy information notice just before it began.

Sub-suppliers include Aware, DXC, Griaule, ID R&D, InnoValor, NEC National Security Systems, Speed Identity, Tech5 and Vision-Box.

That trial was carried out in two stages, with participants in Manchester self-enrolling through both methods in the first. A “specialist biometric testing laboratory” then evaluating the PAD technology’s effectiveness on the kiosks in Manchester and the apps in a lab environment.

Kiosks were found to have generally operated within a good enough range for successful and accurate matching, but further work is needed to make them easy for users in unsupervised environments.

The mobile applications were found widely varying across several areas of performance. The face biometric technologies and fingerprint verification seem to be close to Home Office’s standards. Fingerprint PAD must improve, however, along with usability.

Article Topics

biometric enrollment  |  biometrics  |  contactless biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  identity verification  |  immigration  |  kiosk  |  mobile device  |  presentation attack detection  |  UK