Kenya contracts Idemia for faster biometric police clearance certificates

The Kenya Police Service says it is working to put in place a new biometric system that will accelerate the processing of police clearance certificates.

A system upgrade will see the Automated Palm and Fingerprint Identification System (APFIS) replaced by a Multi-Biometric Identification System (MBIS).

The new system will have a storage capacity for ten million criminal records as opposed to the old one which could only hold two million.

A contract between Idemia and the Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) of the police service to this effect was signed Tuesday.

DCI Director Mohamed Amin, speaking during the signing ceremony, said the move is part of efforts to eliminate delays often noticed in the processing of police clearance certificates.

The official said the move follows complaints from members of the public about the slow nature of processing the important document. Once the MBIS is operational, Amin assured that the police clearance certificate will be issued in one day, unlike the 14 days required at the moment. The daily production capacity of the system will increase from 4,500 to over 20,000, DCI stated during the announcement.

Replies to the announcement on X (formerly Twitter) include several claims of individuals waiting months for their PCC.

Apart from a reduction in the time needed to process the document, the DCI boss said “this feature will tremendously reduce paperwork in the whole process of acquiring a Police Clearance Certificate.” This improvement is partly expected to do integration between the MBIS and Kenya’s civil registry and the eCitizen service portal. As a result of recurrent hitches, officials have sometimes resorted to the manual processing of the certificate which requires more time and resources.

The new biometric software, supplied by M/S Idemia Southern and Eastern Africa Limited, will be installed in DCI headquarters, some police stations around the country as well as in all Huduma Centres nationwide.

Improving speed and quality in biometric capture for law enforcement

Article Topics

ABIS  |  Africa  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  Kenya  |  MBIS  |  police