A portion of the survey, which contains the insights of 530 of the first Australian citizens to use SmartGate, was published in a Qantas employee gazette available to 5,000 staff. The Commonwealth government has spent millions investigating the technology and the ACS has released other statistics from the pilot to back up public endorsement by high-ranking federal Ministers.
But none of these factors, said ACS spokesperson, Matthew Wardell should compel the border authority to make the results of the trial public.
"The trial is not public and the results of the trial, at this stage, are not public either and there isn't intention, at this stage, to release the survey figures...it's part of an ongoing evaluation," said Wardell.
Customs Minister Chris Ellison praised SmartGate, citing figures demonstrating a high level of accuracy, at its public launch in January this year. However argues Wardell the public launch and the comments didn't consititute the minister's endorsement because:
"the minister [Ellison] made no commitment, as far as I'm aware at that stage that the roll-out of the technology was 100 percent sure to go ahead at a given date".
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer gave his backing to Australia's efforts to develop facial recognition technology later in the year, praising the government's decision to invest AU$6.5 million to place the nation at the forefront of international efforts to prevent passport fraud.
But despite the fact that Australia's public purse is being opened to test the system the ACS maintains it is still not compelled to release the results of the survey.
"If the Australian public passport holders were part of the trial then you might have an argument to say that customs -- having expanded this trial to the Australian people -- should be telling the Australian public whether its been successful or not".
The trial involved around 3,000 Qantas staff, the vast majority of which are Australian Passport holders.
"We're not going to talk about the specifics of the survey results --that's not because we've got anything to hide, but were not prepared to go into that sort of detail at this stage".
When it was put to Wardell that to an observer the ACS's lack of preparedness to release the survey might cast doubt on the sincerity of his statement, he said:
"There's no statement that I could make that will avoid you making that assertion if you want to make that assertion".
The survey contains hints that SmartGate may not be living up to expectations.
The ACS surveyed around 530 staff involved in the pilot scheme and found that while 98 percent of the survey group preferred using the system to conventional verification methods, the group was less unanimous about how effective the system was for speeding up Customs clearance.
According to the Qantas cabin crew gazette, "88 percent enrolled because they thought it would expedite their clearance and 62 percent agreed that it had met those expectations."
It is understood that one of the key reasons that ACS was seeking to expedite its border identity verification was to speed up clearance processes to equip Sydney Airport for an expected doubling of passenger loads by 2010.
Further raising interest in what the survey contains, reports released May said the ACS had opted to defer plans to install SmartGate at other Australian ports.
At the time the ACS's said that further testing of the system had been impacted by the SARS crisis but Wardell today indicated the Federal government is taking a pro-active role in holding the project back.
Wardell said the SmartGate unit at Sydney Airport would continue to operate, but "any further expansion of it will be subject to further government consideration, approval and funding".
The ACS said the federal government had not yet provided the port authority with reasons for the funding delay.
