Hyderabad-area schools could get facial recognition roll calls

Government leaders in one of India’s tech hubs have put out to bid for a school attendance-taking system that would use facial recognition on children.

The state of Telangana’s education department wants to hear proposals for a facial recognition system reliable enough to match the identities of a large portion of their 2.2 million students and 107,259 teachers spread across 26,000 schools.

Subjecting children to facial recognition systems has caused consternation in some societies as a possible threat to their privacy.

A winning bid on the three-year contract would have to handle 200,000 faculty members every time attendance is taken, and that can happen multiple times a day. A peak of up to four times that total would be expected, according to the government.

The teachers would record themselves, then turn their phone and record their students – at least 20 children in one image.

State officials expect there to be 2 million students recorded this way, again with a peak of four times that figure.

(According to the Telangana schools site, biometric attendance of some kind is taken already.)

Officials are looking for an end-to-end attendance management, not just a biometric algorithm.

Matches must be made by comparing facial points and the winning system cannot include facial recognition systems that store captured images. The state wants a system in which “fetch the user’s master data and report back the attendance.”

The face-matching software will have to be unusually deft as well. Duplicates have to be blocked, but not images of twins, according to the government.

It is probably a safe bet that vendors from Telangana’s capital, Hyderabad, which is a global information technology center, will be in bidding.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  India  |  school security  |  schools  |  tender  |  time and attendance