ID card and biometric passport roadmap updated

The UK Passport Service (UKPS) has updated its roadmap for introducing passports incorporating biometric information, a key building block of the government's controversial identity card scheme.

It has also scrapped plans for a separate passport card because this has been superseded by the proposed identity card.

Prototyping and testing of the new passports is underway with plans to begin issuing them from the third quarter of this year. The UKPS said it plans to change over completely to the 'ePassport' by the end of the first quarter of next year.

From late 2006 first-time adult passport applicants will attend face-to-face interviews where biometric details can be recorded.

The new passport will use a paper-thin contactless chip which can be read without being swiped through a reader, with enough capacity to store a facial image and at least one additional biometric.

"We believe that issuing passports that contain a biometric chip containing facial image and biographical data will render the document more secure against forgery while facilitating more robust border controls," the UKPS said in its newly published Corporate and Business Plans 2005-2010.

The US is insisting that countries that want to use its visa waiver programme to have in place a programme to put biometric chips in their passports by October 2005, a stance which the UKPS admitted has been forced to "accelerate" its own biometric plans.

In addition, European Union standards require passports to include a facial image and fingerprint scans. The UKPS said that as a result fingerprint scans are likely to be incorporated into the passport chip later in the decade.

Bernard Herdan, UKPS chief executive, said: "We believe significant improvements in identity authentication and document security, both for passports and identity cards, will be reliant upon the inclusion of biometrics."

Other projects under way at the UKPS include:

- Trials of the Personal Identification Project (PIP), testing the use of data sharing with the private sector and other government departments to strengthen identity authentication

- Cutting fraud by creating an electronic link to birth, marriage and death records to eliminate reliance on paper documentation

- Launch of an electronic passport application system integrated with UKPS' back-office processing in the third quarter of this year.

- Creation of a person-centric database. UKPS said there could be significant benefits in storing the data on a person-by-person rather than a passport-by-passport basis.