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National and International Biometric Standards - Development Bodies and Published Standards
For decades NIST has been involved with the law enforcement community in biometric testing and standardization. In the past seven years, NIST has intensified its work in other aspects of biometric standardization working with consortia & other fora. Post 9/11, NIST worked in close partnership with other U.S. government agencies and U.S. industry to help establish formal national and international biometric standards development bodies as the best environments to support deployment of standards-based solutions and to accelerate the development of the required voluntary consensus standards. Many government and commercial applications, including homeland security and the prevention of ID theft, are requiring strong personal verification and identification applications. These requirements include high performance, interoperable systems and standards-based biometric technologies that are capable of rapidly determining an individual's claimed or true identity.
The National Science and Technology Counsel Subcommittee on Biometrics (now Subcommittee on Biometrics & Identity Management) have identified in The National Biometrics Challenge publication the need for the establishment of biometric standards to achieve high performance and systems interoperability and identified as a challenge the ability to easily/rapidly/seamlessly integrate subsystem components into functioning systems provided by different vendors. Conformance testing has also been identified as a challenge and a requirement.
Biometric standardization activities are currently spearheaded by national (INCITS M1) and international (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37) standards bodies on biometrics. Over 60 standard projects are being developed by these standards development bodies.
NIST/ITL is a major contributor to these biometric standardization. It contributes to these standard bodies with officers, technical editors and a number of technical experts.
InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) Technical Committee M1 – Biometrics
INCITS is accredited by, and operates under rules approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). INCITS is the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), encompassing storage, processing, transfer, display, management, organization, and retrieval of information. INCITS also serves as ANSI's Technical Advisory Group for ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1). JTC 1 is responsible for International standardization in the field of Information Technology. INCITS established Technical Committee M1 - Biometrics in November 2001 to ensure a high priority, focused, and comprehensive approach in the United States for the rapid development and approval of formal national and international generic biometric standards. INCITS M1’s program of work includes biometric data interchange formats standards, common file formats, technical interface standards, biometric profiles and performance and conformance testing methodology standards. The goal of M1's work is to accelerate the deployment of significantly better, standards-based security solutions for purposes such as homeland defense and the prevention of identity theft as well as other government and commercial applications based on biometric personal authentication. Membership of INCITS M1 is open to any organization (e.g., academic institutions, federal agencies, companies) directly and materially affected by M1 activities. As the U.S. TAG to SC 37, INCITS M1 is responsible for establishing U.S. positions and contributions to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37, as well as representing the U.S. at SC 37 meetings.
Published National Biometric Standards
As of April 6 2007, seventeen American National Standards developed by INCITS M1 were published as ANSI INCITS standards.
These standards are available (for a fee) from the following sources: Techstreet at http://www.techstreet.com/incitsgate.tmpl and ANSI‘s Standards Store.
ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) Subcommittee 37 (SC 37) – Biometrics
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 [was established in June 2002 by JTC 1. SC 37 has twenty-four Participating member countries, six Observer countries, and fourteen liaison organizations. To access the JTC 1/SC 37 web site go to ISO/IEC JTC 1 and select SC 37 "Biometrics". The Subcommittee is responsible for the standardization of biometric technologies pertaining to human beings to support interoperability and data interchange among applications and systems. These international standards include: biometric technical interfaces such as common file frameworks and biometric application programming interfaces; biometric data interchange formats; biometric profiles; methodologies for performance testing and reporting; conformance testing methodologies for the base standards (e.g., biometric technical interfaces and data interchange formats) and cross jurisdictional and societal aspects of the utilization of biometric technologies. JTC 1/SC 37 is also developing a harmonized biometric vocabulary. Since its inception, JTC 1/SC 37 has maintained a fast-pace of standards development due to the increased customers needs for open systems international standards for biometric technologies. The Subcommittee has completed the “first generation” of international biometric standards including biometric data interchange formats for a number of biometric modalities and key biometric technical interface standards. JTC1 1/SC 37 is rising to the challenges presented by technology innovations and new customer’s needs by examining innovations in biometrics technologies and personal recognition systems and has taken steps to meet these new challenges and customers’ needs.
Published International Biometric Standards
As of April 6 2007, sixteen International standards developed by JTC 1/SC 37 were published as International (ISO/IEC) standards.
These standards are available (for a fee) from the following sources:
ANSI’s Standards Store ANSI’s eStandards Store and the ISO Store
Techstreet at http://www.techstreet.com/incitsgate.tmpl also offers the International standards.
American National Standard for Information Systems - Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Other Biometric Information – Proposed ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007
In April and December of 2005, workshops were held at NIST to discuss updates and proposals to the Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Scar Mark & Tattoo (SMT) Information standard (ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2000). Since the end of the second workshop, updates to the standard were developed that incorporated the changes and updates proposed during the two workshops. These draft updates was circulated to canvassees and interested parties. Comments received were used to correct and update the draft.
The proposed 2007 version of the Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Other Biometric Information standard is now available and can be downloaded as (Proposed-ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007) [PDF] This document is being released at this time to canvassees for their official vote. The letter ballot period has been extended 15 days to March 20, 2007.
More information on this standard can be found at ANSI/NIST Fingerprint Standard Update .
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