Biometrics proves 1 percent of applicants to enter U.S. are unsuitable

with law enforcement on lesser charges that they otherwise be released, if undetected, is terribly important, so it’s important that the public know that we have measures in place that will protect them. So that’s one reason.

Another reason is we’re spending a great deal of the public’s money collectively across the government. I don’t know the total figure, but I do know that it’s in excess of a billion dollars a year. Over the past few years, a fair amount of that goes under war supplemental, and that won’t continue going on in the future (at least the war supplemental won’t) but we’re nevertheless talking many hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s not just important that we have a significant message but that we have significant behavior, and that the public and the representatives in congress that review our activities and approve our budgets, see consistencies in our behavior that we’re effective stewards of the public resources and that they’re getting value for the money that’s being expended.

Archer: Globally biometrics programs are at various stages of maturity, where do you think the community looks to for best practice? Considering the UID scheme in India and the Hong Kong Smart Card System, maybe talk to us a little bit about that.

Loudermilk: I don’t think that there is a monolithic answer to that. Different cultures have different challenges, and frankly different responses. We tend to think in the United States that we’re ahead in every area, but that’s not true. There are places in Japan and other parts of Asia that are specifically using biometrics in electronic commerce, and as you well know, while there’s some use of electronic commerce in the United States, it’s very minimal, so that’s an example.

The India Project, certainly when they get it done is going to have the largest number of enrolled subjects of any system in the world; on the other hand it’s not a single integrated monolithic system but a number of regional systems that have some limited ability to interoperate. Everybody looks forward to it with great interest, and we are too, because it has the prospect of driving down the cost of capture devices significantly, which will make it more cost effective to use biometrics for commercial applications and frankly for some government applications.

It interests me, when I sometimes go to speak and sometimes attend international conferences, that there’s a great deal