Security Documents Needed When You Travel

The e-Passport Revisited

It has been some time since I have talked about the e-Passport and National ID Card, and since these tend to be hot button topics, and a favorite topic of mine to discuss, I thought I would touch up on the subject in today’s Posting.  One would think that with the global economy the way it is, and the fear of another huge debt crisis in Europe, that the demand for the National ID Card and e-Passport infrastructures would surely wane.  After all, these great tools of secured documentation to have, but perhaps not deemed as necessary to spend crucial money on as is job creation.  But quite to the contrary, the demand for it is picking up, especially in the European region.

According to some recent market research, as of this year so far, some 225+ million electronic identity documents were delivered, which stands at an 18% increase in demand as opposed to 2010.  It is further expected that over the course of the seven years, this demand is expected to grow by 7%, and that market capitalization should reach almost 7.5 billion Euros by the year of 2014 (SOURCE:  http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9095/). 

But, keep in mind that these statistics are just for electronic documents, in general.  For the e-Passport and the National ID Card, there are other factors, cited by market research which will fuel the demand for these infrastructures.  There are three main reasons:

*It is being used in just about every country:  For example, from what I have read, Canada is the only developed country left to adopt the e-Passport (which comes as a huge surprise to me).  It is the developing nations, which are fast adopting the e-Passport, especially that in the Asian Pacific region.  China is expected to launch trials of its own e-Passport sometime this year.

*The need to count and recognize citizens in every country:  Here, the results seem to be mixed.  For instance, India has launched the world’s largest Biometric project to count its citizens, whereas the United Kingdom just recently nixed their own efforts (despite its legislation passed in 2006 called the
“Identity Cards Act”.  Germany will be launching its own National ID Card (some 80+ million will be issued), France will launch theirs, as well as Turkey (some 75+ million cards will be issued, using some 100,000 Biometric readers and scanners).  The major Biometric Vendors are also witnessing a growth for technology in the use for a National ID Card infrastructure, and the demand for this is expected to keep up pace with the e-Passport.

*A strong demand for Biometrics in general:  It seems that worldwide, the demand for Biometrics is growing very strong.  The market applications and the needs very.  These cut across such spectrums as Identity Theft, creating a secure drivers’ license, registering and keeping track of voters in national and local elections, Internet and Cybersecurity, protecting the national electrical power grid of the United States, and making sure that the poor citizens in the developing nations of the world get their fair share of entitlements and benefits from their respective governments. 

So as one can see, the demand for National ID Cards and e-Passport infrastructures will continue to grow very strong in demand in the foreseeable future.  This will probably only be fueled by as the world continues to grow in population.  But while this is all great news, especially from an economic view, I have one very strong concern: 

The technical aspects involved.  And the biggest problem I foresee is with creating a set of Best Practices and Uniform standards that each and every country can use.  It makes no sense to have all this demand and all of the technology deployed, if it is not interoperable with the infrastructures of all of the countries around the world.  While I am sure there are many other technical concerns to be addressed, I foresee this to be the biggest one as the world comes together with their e-Passport and National ID infrastructures.

Comments

[Payroll Administrator Courses]

While traveling, security documents like national id card or e-passport are very useful and important. It is needed for our security.

[muska supra]

Love those! I enjoy following your posts on facebook and rss!