D3.6: Study on ID Documents

Title: DATABASES FOR BIOMETRIC REFERENCE DATA

From a legal and technical perspective, where in addition to the MRTD the biometric data will be stored is an interesting question. On the European level a central database for biometric data has been discussed. The resulting Council Regulation (EC) No. 2252/2004 ultimately does not include a central European database and leaves this topic up to national legislation in the member states (see Recital 4).

The European member states follow different strategies concerning central databases for biometrics, so that no general line can be observed. Central databases are planned in the UK, The Netherlands and Sweden (storage planned at the police), in Italy and Germany for example the data needed for the passports including biometric data will be stored decentralised in accordance with the issuing process at the municipalities. In France currently two different proposals are being discussed outlined in the INES project (proposed by the Ministry of Interior) and the strategic e-government plan. While the strategic e-government plan foresees a decentralised storage of biometric data, the INES project prefers a centralised database for all citizens.

In addition to databases set up by the issuing countries of ID documents some non-European countries plan to implement databases on biometrics of foreign visitors. In this case the issuing countries and the users of the ID document have no control any more over their personal data. This is especially problematic in countries where data protection, fair information practices and similar principles are not applied.

Other Back-Office Systems

Depending on the purposes for which additional ID documents are going to be used additional back-office systems may be used. They are dependent on the underlying procedures and different, mainly national implementations. Mainly those back-office systems play a role in the social insurance and health sector. Planned implementations show a big variety. Examples are:  

• Centralised database approaches for permanent data storage and workflow-systems basing on that data (such as planned for social security data in the German JobCard),  

• Combined approaches for long term, database like storage of certain data and post-box like, short term storage of other data (such as implemented in prototypes of the German e-health card) 

In these different back-office systems the ID document has different functions. Mainly it is used to identify and authenticate citizen and officer processing the data. In rare cases such as the German e-health card the central storage is a back-up and the enabler for additional functions for the e-health card.