The Home Office is planning to run a three-month trial of self-service biometric kiosks as part of its efforts to regulate migration and the movements of overseas visitors.
It has indicated that the kiosks should make it possible for users to enrol their face and fingerprint biometrics before they travel to the UK.
The department has published a market notice for support in the trial, saying the technology is relatively mature and that it ran feasibility trials late last year, but it wants to assess how it works in an operational setting.
“Before a full live service can be considered, the self-service kiosks must prove they can reliably verify e-passports and enrol high quality face and fingerprint biometrics and biographics, bind the individual to their face and fingerprint biometrics and operate effective presentation attack detection,” it says.
“The self-service kiosk must do this for all potential customers, while delivering a simple user experience, and the kiosks should be able to operate in an unsupervised environment.”
Four deployments
It adds that the trial will involve at least four self-service kiosks and will involve the selection of a wide range of users. Three of the kiosks will be deployed at enrolment centres and one at a presentation attack detection facility, using software to detect any attempts to subvert the system.
An analysis of the feasibility trial, published earlier this month, says that kiosks are further developed than mobile phones for the enrolment process, and that presentation attack detection on a mobile app needs further work. The Home Office plans to run a second round of feasibility trials for mobiles.
“The success of these trials and the insights provided have brought the Home Office closer to achieving its ambition of remote self-enrolment,” the document says.
“Considering these results, it is hoped that by continuing to work with industry and by piloting new solutions, current self-enrolment technology will improve to be in a production-ready state within the next one to three years.”
