scope:

This document provides an overview of the current deployment of biometric systems within Europe. It addresses the challenges that are being faced, in order to detect the current needs for improving the specifications for the implementation and deployment of biometric systems. This document considers all kind of deployments, from border control to ad hoc services. As most of the deployed systems are based on the use of fingerprints or face recognition, this document will focus on these two biometric modalities, from the system integrator and interoperability points of view.

Identity documents, in terms of production, structure, interoperability, etc., are out of the scope of this document. The document is focused on the performance at system level.

The current European legislative initiatives around this topic (e.g. Entry/Exit System, framework for interoperability between EU information systems, etc.) need a robust framework study about the availability of standard technologies to improve interoperability in biometric products around the European Union.

By showing these needs, a set of recommendations for future standardization works is provided.

From a methodological perspective, the report gathers information of different entities with this classification:

- Capture/enrolment of biometrics including the quality assurance and the generation of feature or biometric models from the images.

- Best practices and guidelines to use biometrics in Europe.

- Data Quality environment using biometrics in European networks.