Many countries are turning to biometric technology to offer more accurate and timely verification of identity.

The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) is building a Biometrics Hub (BioHub) that will be a centralised repository of all biometric information belonging to Singapore citizens, Permanent Residents and foreigners residing or working in Singapore and issued with valid residential pass.

To be fully implemented by 2010, the BioHub will provide other crucial biometric-related services such as the centralised screening, verification and administration of biometric information.

Biometrics is the science of establishing human identity through physical and behavioural characteristics such as the fingerprints, iris or face of an individual. With the growing emphasis on national and global security, many countries are turning to biometric technology to offer more accurate and timely verification of identity.

ICA was one of the earliest border security agencies in the world to adopt biometric technology for immigration clearance. In 1997, the then-Singapore Immigration & Registration agency envisaged the benefits of using fingerprint biometric as a secure form of identity verification and tapped on the technology in its implementation of the Immigration Automated Clearance System.

Over the past decade, the ICA has continued to leverage on biometric technology to progressively roll out more systems that revolve around the science of biometric technology which is now adopted globally.

The BioHub will be a centralised repository of biometric information in Singapore.

In the process of implementing these systems, they had to be integrated to enable the real-time exchange of biometric data, which was required to support ICA's business needs.

At the same time, with the expansion of ICA's customer base, the agency began to look to the reconsolidation of the information databases linked to the various biometric systems and to explore the implementation of a seamless method of information retrieval.

The BioHub embraces the concept of a borderless system which provides a more definitive means of identifying an individual through the matching of more than one set of biometric information. The implementation of the BioHub also involves close multi-agency collaboration.

When ready, it will allow travellers to authenticate their identity quickly and provides a more secure means for immigration clearance. The BioHub will also assist in the identification of individuals within Singapore, thus helping to minimise incidents of identity theft as the authorities would have access to a national biometric database to establish the identity of an individual.

As the nerve-centre for biometric-related services, the BioHub will also enable external agencies that require biometric services to subscribe to them through the interoperable web technologies that are currently available.