Impotent men of technologies: Australia closed a single biometric system

In January, 2019 it became known of project closure on creation of a single biometric system in Australia — Biometric Identification Services (BIS). National financial and auditing administration of Australia (Australian National Audit Office, ANAO) called technology "imperfect" at accomplishment of almost all tasks which had to be assigned to it.

The tender for development of BIS in 2016 was won by the Australian representative office of NEC. The initial budget the project made 52 million Australian dollars (about $37 million at the rate of for January 22, 2019). The authorities spent 34 million Australian dollars and did not achieve effective objectives.

Australia closed a single biometric system

Any of stages or project deliverables was not achieved, said in the report of ANAO.

As envisioned by initiators of BIS, the solution had to replace a national automated system of identification of fingerprints (NAFIS) and provide a possibility of face recognition for expansion of biometric opportunities of law enforcement agencies. Into a new system it was going to load about 12 million images of persons of citizens which are stored in the police database.

According to ANAO, on early project implementation phase NEC met difficulties, and the company was forced to stop the project on June 15, 2018.

After that the Australian commission on operational search activity (Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, ACIC) addressed Morpho company which was responsible for creation and system maintenance of NAFIS. The government contract with Morpho expires in May, 2020, and ACIC did not decide on its future.^[1]

According to the auditor, ACIC could not manage effectively the BIS project because of incorrectly approach which was characterized by the following:

• bad risk management;
• lack of the stipulated intermediate project evaluations and payment transfers in process of accomplishment;
• non-compliance with a detailed plan of implementation;
• inadequate financial management.

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