The Australian Department of Home Affairs’ has gone live with its new Enterprise Biometric Identification Services (EBIS) system based on the Unisys Stealth (Identity)™. The system also uses IDEMIA’s facial and fingerprint recognition algorithms and is used for visa and border processing.
EBIS will be used by the department to match the facial images and fingerprints of people including those wishing to travel to Australia such as visa applicants and the facial images for citizenship applicants. The system simultaneously facilitates the processing of legitimate travellers and is designed to support anticipated growth in visa applications, border clearances and applications for citizenship over the next 10 years.
In 2019 there were a record 9.5 million visitors to Australia, 3.9 million more than 10 years earlier and 220,300 more than the previous years. The goal of the system is to verify the identities of travellers and confirm they are who they say they are. Down the track, the goal is to use EBIS to quickly flag people who may be crossing the border with fraudulent identities.
Unisys designed and implemented the system within 18 months of signing the contract with the department. EBIS supports face, finger, iris and voice recognition and is designed for volumes of up to 100,000 transactions a day and manages large-scale galleries.
The Stealth (Identity) solution provides the core biometric identity management functionality of EBIS including the user interface, workflows, business rules, identity data and record linking and auditing functionality. EBIS replaces the previous biometrics matching system that was also provided and supported by Unisys for the last 12 years. The core of EBIS’ fingerprint and facial biometric matching solution uses industry-leading biometric matching algorithms from IDEMIA to quickly and accurately match fingerprints and facial images.
