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governmental functions easier and more effective, such as education, social security, and in general,
any other public policy that may demand beneficiaries’ identification.
Towards an Interchange of Biometric Data
Governments need to have secure identification mechanism to implement public policies.
Identification allows people to have access to social benefits, social security benefits, to enrol their
children at school, to receive hospital care, to vote, etc. The State shall ensure the full exercise of
social, voting and civil rights, public security and cross-border traffic. For all these public polices,
biometric data associated to biographical data is one of the keys for success. To have this biometric
database associated to biographical data allows and facilitates the implementation of the major
public policies.
From the point of view of the user, it is simply “one finger for a couple of seconds: this is what an
individual will be required”. It can be a hospital, a bank, a government agency or a polling station. An
individual will be requested to place his/her finger on a finger scanner device that will immediately
confirm if that finger effectively is that individual’s finger. From the governments’ point of view, it is an
essential tool to facilitate the execution of relevant public policies. It is not enough to have biometric
data in different databases managed by different agencies or organizations, but to cooperate and
share that information for a rational use, supported on ICTs, of easy access by non-experts and in line
with current times.
Therefore the issue is to set up collaboration mechanisms to be able to have quick information
from the integration of a database of biographical and biometric data of an individual in a digitized
format, susceptible to be shared in real time by different government agencies. At present, the only
information the government has stored in digital format are the biographical data of an individual:
first, middle and last name, sex, date of birth, etc.
In turn, biometric data (fingerprints) have historically been kept in paper-based documents in a
file. They cannot be used by an automatic identity verification system. For not having these tools
available, a physical person may have more than one identity because there is no way to make a ‘one
to n’ control’, i.e. against the total.
In addition to the uses in banking, health and social services, an evident use of this system would be
for voting. This would be basic to create voting rolls with biometric patterns to verify the voter’s
identity before casting his/her vote. This will ensure that no person will be able to vote under
another individual’s name.
Signature Infrastructures
The countries of this region have made progress in the legal recognition of the document and the
electronic signature. 1
In some countries legislation has considered digital signature schemes, i.e., electronic authentication
systems based on public key technologies. This means the existence of Digital Signature Infrastructures,
of national scope. Nevertheless, in an environment where commercial and government transactions
cross borders, this legislation does not cover such interchanges, there being a legal vacuum.
UNCITRAL Regulations
Thus, it turns necessary to promote agreements among the countries of the region, that taking into
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