An HS Daily Wire Q&A with IBG's co-founder Raj Nanavati

out for them. But in terms of going out there and convincing the world that biometrics is a good thing, we don’t really do that. We do, however, often act as the biometric industry voice, doing hundreds of media interviews each year. We talk with the press every day. We’ve been in every major industry publication and media outlet I can think of.

Part of our purpose is to help educate the public about biometrics. One key facet is to raise the level of discussion and provide current, accurate data so that everyone knows what’s going on. That’s why we put out a lot of information on our website. That’s why we speak at 50 or 60 conferences a year — so that all the media folks have the right information about the technology.

One thing we try never to do is give the impression that biometrics is the panacea for every problem. We want to make sure our clients get the help they need and in some cases that does not include using biometric technology. There have been plenty of times when we’ve recommended that a client scale back an ambitious biometrics program. We’ve told them, you don’t need all that stuff — consider this technology instead, which is sufficient for your needs.

Daily Wire: And you have no favorites among biometric solutions?

Nanavati: That’s right. We don’t. A key, bedrock element of IBG is that we have no vested stake in any one technology. We don’t care what modality people use. We definitively don’t care which vendor they use. We don’t care if they use biometrics or they don’t use biometrics. We care that they have an end solution that meets their program goals and that we provide superior expert services.

The US-VISIT program provides an example. We worked with the US government before the RFP came out, to help them develop a plan for that project. We didn’t go into that thinking “we’re going to push this technology or this vendor.” We asked ourselves questions that would help us clarify the needs of the U.S. government. What are the goals? What are the mandates under the Patriot Act and other pieces of legislation? What makes the most sense for the government? We put together recommendations based on all of these factors, and submitted them. Our involvement ended there. We didn’t have any a priori perspective on what needed to be done, on