Session: ePassports, eVisas and eIDs: The good, the bad and the ugly

Speech title: UK FCO - Meeting changing needs and challenges for passports overseas

A UK perspective on recent initiatives and a new system to improve passport processing abroad, meeting citizen needs for travel documents overseas and an opportunity to establish a new ICAO standard for Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs).

Synopsis:
The security of a passport is only as good as the people, the standards, the processes and the technology you put in place to produce the document. The FCO, in consultation with the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has implemented a new processing system (BRIDGE) and Emergency Travel Document (ETD) to meet the changing needs of citizens abroad. The presenter will discuss the security and cost effectiveness improvements to be achieved, while meeting the needs of citizens abroad for urgent travel documents.

The new ETD product sets the standard for emergency documents – secure but flexible and internationally acceptable for entry, exit and transit purposes, meeting the requirements of a wide range of customers, particularly those in need of consular assistance. The establishment of a new machine readable ETD highlights the opportunity to agree on an international standard for such documents (under review by the ICAO-NTWG) to addresses a weak link in present passport standards.

The new BRIDGE system for emergency travel documents overseas closes another loophole on passport fraud, underpinning the successful delivery of the UK National Identity Scheme. The experiences to date will be discussed to show how the combination of a new ETD, the centralised production of full validity passports and the introduction of a new set of passport processes can improve overall passport system security.

Background & Further Description:
Passport issuance abroad requires a balancing act between the challenges of security, cost-effectiveness and service delivery. These challenges have lead many countries to centralise their overseas passport personalisation in the home country. This can reduce the costs and risks of fraudulent issuance of passports for most full validity e-passports or machine readable passports.

But centralisation also constrains our ability to provide fast, premium services for people who need to travel quickly. ETDs have therefore grown in significance and can be issued by consular missions in times of crises or to replace a lost or stolen full passport for immediate travel. Currently, ETDs vary from a single handwritten page or small booklet in some countries to a limited validity temporary machine readable passport in others.

Within this overall picture, passport processing abroad presents a different set of security and cost challenges compared to in-country passport processing, including:

• Securing worldwide homogeneous processes for approval and review, sometimes under crisis situations;
• Operating on global infrastructures, sometimes with severe constraints;
• Having expensive equipment at many locations that may only issue a relatively small number of passports per year;
• Unique security concerns;
• Having blank passport booklets available at 200+ locations abroad;
• Securing inventory and providing secure shipment;
• Situations of limited IT support resources;

Current ETDs must be considered a weak link in the passport “family” when compared with Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDs) or e-Passports. The FCO and IPS are working together to address the challenges of passport processing abroad and to improve the security of ETDs via a new machine readable document and the new BRIDGE system. The BRIDGE system was first used in August 2009 to issue the first new ETD in New York City and global rollout continues into mid 2010.