Australian Customs Service (ACS) and Passports Australia, assigned to separate tiers of the project, today said their systems would comply with the international standard for border control to be adopted by ICAO.
The announcement means Australian passports should recognised by screening systems installed at ports in ICAO's 188 member countries.
Passports Australia was given the task of incorporating machine readable biometric identifiers into Australian passports. Australian Customs was given the role of evaluating face-recognition hardware system, called SmartGate, expected to be installed at Australian borders.
Passports Australia spokesperson, Bob Nash, has indicated that government authorities played a significant role in setting the ICAO standard rather than just following it.
"The Ausrtalian government wrote the technical document that formed the basis of that decision by ICAO," said Nash.
The ACS said the SmartGate face recognition technology hardware would also comply with ICAO standard.
SmartGate's progress to the nationwide roll-out phase has been patchy. Customs launched SmartGate under a six-month pilot program last November but publicly launched the system earlier than expected in January claiming it was satisfied with the system. Last week, the ACS announced that it postponed a tender to select a partner for a national pilot of the system pending further trialling.
