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Border crossings: Morpho has developed a biometric solution for Australia

A vital challenge that concerns most government border agencies at the present time is; how do you expedite border checks while increasing security? To tackle this challenge head-on, the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (Customs and Border Protection) has taken advantage of Morpho’s technological competence and know-how which was used to develop a completely automated electronic passportbased biometric border system. Morpho Australasia is Morpho’s subsidiary in the Asia Pacific region and Cyril Dujardin is the Managing Director. He looks back at this remarkable world-first development.

Faced with a constant increase in air passenger traffic number since 2001, Australia decided to develop automated border processing to simplify and accelerate control without compromising security. Biometric solutions were the natural choice given their reliability, and face recognition chosen for its accuracy as well as practical considerations - it is the least intrusive - the public is used to have their photo taken for ID documents -, and easy to use. In addition, it automated the face-to-passport check that is undertaken manually by Customs and Border Protection officers.

A conclusive test

Customs and Border Protection imagined the SmartGate concept and testing began in November 2002. Volunteers from Qantas’ flight crew enrolled by having their photographs taken. These pictures were used to populate a database that was utilised by biometric gates to check their identity whenever they used them.
This initial experimental phase was a great success and in 2003, Customs and Border Protection invited international tenders to improve the concept, design software and hardware solutions, and take SmartGate to a commercial level. Morpho was awarded the contract in May 2004: “The company was selected because we are both experts in biometrics applications and experienced systems integrators. We were already at the cutting-edge of facial recognition technology - then seldom deployed -, able to integrate a complete solution and provide a value-added service locally”, adds Cyril Dujardin.

A simplified process

Morpho and Customs and Border Protection then began a consultation phase: “The objective was to understand the border control process and to define with then the solution that they needed to deploy. It was not only a technological solution; it had to consider the current business processes and integrate the system as seamlessly as possible. Some of these processes proved to be quite a challenge. For example: when travellers arrive at passport control, their Incoming Passenger Card is checked by a Customs and Border Protection officer. So how could this inspection be carried out without the officer?”

In September 2004, Morpho delivered a prototype equipped with a smart card reader, which was trialled until June 2005. SmartGate could thus check the traveller’s identity by comparing their face with the digitised photograph stored on the chip of the new Australian electronic passport (ePassport), which was to be widely distributed in 2005. Users are therefore not required to enrol or register: travellers over the age of 18 who hold an Australian or New Zealand ePassport can use SmartGate if they want to.
“Because the solution used an electronic passport, while our main customer was Customs and Border Protection, we also worked with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. We took part in workshops with these partners and also with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, which reports to the Department of Defence, in order to assess the solutions that the government had set up.” To facilitate interaction, Morpho opened an office in Canberra in 2006. “This fostered real dialogue in fine-tuning the specifications of the system to our customer’s precise requirements.”

A completely automated system

Since 2007, the latest version of SmartGate has been rolled out to selected Australian international airports. The latest version is a two-step process involving a kiosk and a gate.

Travellers insert their ePassport into a kiosk that checks their eligibility to use the automated process and issues a ticket. The traveller then inserts this ticket in the biometric gate and a digital camera instantly compares their face against their ePassport photo. If the captured image and ePassport photo match, and clearance is verified, the gate opens to allow entry into Australia. This process is completely automated and allows Customs and Border Protection to provide more processing points to help handle future increases in passenger traffic, which is forecast to rise until at least 2016. Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth international airports are now equipped with the new generation of SmartGate. SmartGate kiosks have also been installed at Auckland International Airport enabling travellers to complete the first step of the automated entry process into Australia before they leave New Zealand. There are future plans to gradually extend eligibility of SmartGate to other nationalities with ePassports that comply with the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.