December marked the start of long-awaited next phase of the Biometric Self-Enrolment Feasibility Trials (BSEFT), with both in person and remote testing taking place.
The challenge:
Under the current UK immigration system, some migrants and visitors are required to provide face and fingerprint biometrics ahead of travel to enable identity and security checks before they can be granted immigration permission. Under a single global immigration system, the Home Office’s long-term aim is that all foreign nationals subject to immigration control will enrol their face and fingerprint biometrics ahead of travel to the UK. The vision is to utilise contactless self-enrolment for those who are not required to apply for a visa, as part of an ecosystem of pre-travel enrolment options.
As part of achieving this ambition, JSaRC has worked with policy and technical colleagues at the Home Office and beyond to run the Biometric Self-Enrolment Feasibility Trials. The aim is to assess the current capability of existing technology solutions and drive further development to achieve a range of challenging criteria and requirements.
In response to this challenge, the JSaRC-led BSEFT project team has been working with biometric technology companies since 2021 on behalf of Future Borders Immigration System (FBIS), to drive the development of app-based solutions. They have hosted bespoke feasibility trials to test the effectiveness of developing biometric capture capabilities and assess market maturity for biometric smartphone apps.
Manchester 2021:
2021 marked the first set of trials in Manchester, involving 545 participating members of the public, testing technology from 14 suppliers.
Suppliers provided smartphone applications and self-service kiosks, which captured a person’s face and fingerprint biometrics. To effectively evaluate the maturity of these solutions, participants across a range of demographics were recruited, along with a specialist biometric testing laboratory.
The key areas being tested were:
🔹 Can biometrics be self-enrolled to a high quality?
🔹 Effectiveness of contactless fingerprint quality algorithms
🔹 Effectiveness of Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) capabilities within suppliers’ solutions to determine genuine and non-genuine biometrics
🔹 Quality performance of self-enrolled biometrics when matched against those enrolled using traditional contact-based enrolment methods
🔹 Efficiency of capture rates
The results from this phase of testing revealed that the app-based solutions required further development and maturity, and future projects would continue to drive this capability though internal benchmarking trials.
A more detailed breakdown of the 2021 trials (including a summary of the data collected) can be found here.
Benchmarking Trials 2022-23:
The first of these took place in November 2022, testing the capability of smartphone app solutions from 5 leading industry suppliers and over 100 Home Office volunteers. Results were assessed and analysed, and individual supplier performance feedback reports were compiled and shared to enable iterative technological development. There were also tests for self-enrolment vs assisted enrolment, a process where the participant’s fingerprints are captured by another person in control of the capture device (smartphone).
The second round of benchmarking trials were held in Sept 2023, and involved 9 technology suppliers and over 120 Home Office volunteers, enabling them to try out a range of different industry solutions, helping to provide a unique view of the application process through the lens of a customer. Like in the previous trial, each app was assessed against a range of performance criteria, including on both Android and IOS devices.
The success criteria of the applications tested was based on their ability to identify and verify the fingerprints using the smartphone camera. Additionally, the usability of the applications was under review – specifically how easy they were to operate.
Key stats:
🔹 iOS and Android App versions tested.
🔹 4 days of trials.
🔹 Over 10,000 fingerprints captured.
🔹 11 hours of user research interviews.
🔹 Over 124 hours of testing by trial participants.
.
Results and Outcomes
The second phase of the benchmarking trials were deemed a success, with the data pointing to some strong development across a range of biometric enrolment solutions. All the apps tested showed signs of improvement against the pre-defined success criteria, indicating good market maturity for these solutions.
Next steps
The two previous rounds of trials have gone a long way to proving that the government’s interest in biometric collection is viable and feasible and were a critical step in developing the required solutions to ensure they could meet the required standard.
As these results are based on a relatively small sample of Home Office users, further testing is required to assess how well market solutions perform on a larger and more diverse cohort of participants, including for the first time in BSEFT trials, children.
Comments