International standard for testing bias in biometrics reaches committee stage

The standard for testing demographic differentials or ‘bias’ in biometric systems has reached the committee draft stage, and comments from national standards bodies are now being sought.

The advancement of the proposed ISO/IEC 19795-10 standard was reported by Maryland Test Facility Principal Data Scientist John Howard on LinkedIn.

Paravision’s Benji Hutchinson points out in the thread that the advancing standard could inform the ongoing revision of NIST’s 800-63, and the U.S. General Services Administration’s current debate over how to meet the expected level of identity assurance with biometrics without making access inequitable.

Howard and Yevgeniy Sirotin presented some of their findings on broad homogeneity, which is one of the factors in demographic disparities, at IFPC 2022. NIST is working on a method for summarizing demographic differences, which was described at the same event.

The biometric bias testing standard has been in development for three years so far, and the committee is seeking comments on the draft from now until May 18, 2023.

A full consideration of biometric bias needs to take data capture, matching, and database systems into account, as CITeR Director Stephanie Schuckers pointed out during Authenticate 2022.

Article Topics

biometric bias  |  biometrics  |  demographic fairness  |  facial recognition  |  identity assurance  |  ISO standards