A radical overhaul of security at Australia’s international airports is the first step toward the Australian government’s goal of automating 90 percent of air traveler processing by 2020.
The Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection is to start moving toward a “contactless” system for arrivals this year, reports said yesterday — the most ambitious stage of the Seamless Traveller initiative, which was first announced in 2015.
Incoming paper passenger cards would be abolished and manned stations would be replaced by electronic stations and automatic triage.
Passengers would not need to show their passports, instead being processed by biometric recognition of their faces, irises and/or fingerprints. Under the new system, the existing SmartGates that scan passports electronically — introduced less than 10 years ago — would be retired.
A spokeswoman said automated processing technology provided a simpler process for travelers and enabled the Australian Border Force to meet the challenges of increasing traveler numbers “while maintaining the security of our border.”
Australian Strategic Policy Institute head of border security John Coyne said the system could be a world first.
The intention was to streamline the arrivals process so that international passengers could “literally just walk out like at a domestic airport” using biometric technology.
“Our ability to harness the power of big data is increasing exponentially,” he said.
The Australian government aims to have 90 percent of travelers processed automatically, with no human involvement at all, by 2019 to 2020, but how that will be executed remains to be seen.
“The department is asking tenderers to provide innovative solutions to allow arriving travelers to self-process,” an immigration spokeswoman said in a statement. “The department has not therefore defined the specific solution or how it will differ from existing arrivals or departures SmartGates.”
The department wants to trial the technology in July at Canberra Airport, which handles limited flights to New Zealand and Singapore, before introducing it at a major airport in November, reports said.
The rollout would be complete by March 2019.
Asked how confident the department could be of meeting those deadlines when “the specific solution” had not yet been decided, the spokeswoman pointed to the success of the SmartGates.
“This target is already routinely achieved in some international airports in Australia with departures SmartGates. The department has robust contingency arrangements in place should system errors affect passenger movements and processing,” the spokeswoman said.
About A$94 million (US$71 million) to be spent over five years from 2015 was budgeted for the Seamless Traveller project of “next-generation automatic biometric processing at major air and sea ports.”
Forty-million air and sea travelers were processed by the Australian Border Force in 2015 and last year.
In May last year, Australian Department of Immigration Secretary Michael Pezzull told the CIVSEC Border 21 conference in Melbourne that improved technology permitted those systems to be reimagined.
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