Report - Guardian

174 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005- The use of biometrics adds to the cost of the card system. The most significantcost is the time and effort to enrol individuals and collect biometric data;- Ultimately the choice of biometric, or to not use biometrics at all, may be basedon total system costs.The report is very clear that 100% certainty in authentication can never be guaranteed,particularly on the scale foreseen by the Government. The study was conducted on theassumptions that the Government’s scheme would involve:- Approximately 50 million people;- Daily throughput between 10,000 and 50,000 enrolments in the roll-out phase of10 years;- Daily throughput of 3000 enrolments after the roll-out phase, due to new 16-yearolds and foreign residents;- Approximately 2000 local offices for processing (at UKPS and DVLA localoffices and by High Street Partners);The report also highlights the factors essential to successful use of biometrics forauthentication:- Extent to which the system operates without human intervention;- Degree of ‘uniqueness’ of the biometric;- Technical factors (e.g. security, robustness, cost, scalability);- Social factors (e.g. acceptability, trust in the operators of the system).The report makes some conclusions regarding the specific biometrics. While fingerprintbiometrics are the most likely to be implemented on a large scale, the comparison timescan be very slow. Iris scan results are compared at a much faster rate, but the technologyis not yet tested for wide deployment. Face recognition is a long way from achieving thenecessary accuracy for what the Government envisions, and ‘recent trials of thetechnology have shown relatively poor identification performance for even quite smallpopulations’, though it works well for one-to-one verification. While the combination ofbiometrics does allow for an improved performance, “the performance improvement isunlikely to be commensurate with the increased costs, and collection of the additionalbiometric images might be seen as unnecessarily intrusive by the public.”The report goes on to call for pilot implementations of the technologies to obtain goodestimates of performance. The UK Passport Service was set to do such a study, but inthe end, it undertook only a user acceptability test.Usability, accessibility, and acceptance of biometricsUsability, accessibility and acceptance of the technology by the citizen are key concernswith the implementation of biometrics.Usability: currently available equipment is difficult to operate, particularly by peoplewho are not used to interacting with high-tech equipment, and by those who are notusing the technology frequently. Some of the problems could be overcome through aprogram of usability testing and re-design to provide better user instructions and