Welcome Speech By Mr. Stephen MAK, Deputy Government Chief Information Officer at the Annual Conference 2007 of the Information Technology Division, Hong Kong Institution of Engineers
4 May 2007

Raymond, Samson, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning! I am delighted to be here today to join you at the "Annual Conference 2007" of the Information Technology (IT) Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE).

I'm indeed honoured to be in such a distinguished audience, on such a important theme. The theme of the Conference today is Biometrics: Technology, Applications and Privacy. It is a meaningful and powerful theme that brings out the global quest for application of technology to enhance our daily life and improve productivity.

The Advent of Biometrics

Biometrics is not new. Explorers had reported that Chinese merchants had stamped children's palm prints and footprints on paper with ink as a way of identifying one child from another as early as the 14th century. I was told that in historic caves that date back more than 30,000 years palm prints were found alongside other archaeological items.

In the last century, people used fingerprinting and photos to identify individuals. Biometrics as we know it today covers a whole range of technologies involving retinal scans, voice recognition, hand geometry, movement and signature recognition. These have no doubt surpassed anything our ancestors would have predicted. In recent years, biometrics has moved from relative obscurity, as something in movies or novels, to public consciousness and daily life applications.

To cite a few examples, facial recognition has been used by many government programmes on national identity cards and electronic passports. We can also see deployment of fingerprint biometrics at the Disneyland, including the one in Hong Kong. The relatively new finger vein and palm vein technologies have been commercialised and used in ATM machines of some banks in Japan. Voice biometrics is now an effective solution for out-of-band authentication of web-based application and authentication of customers in call centre applications.

The Market Forecast

Needless to say, the biometric technology market is growing fast. According to the International Biometric Group, the overall biometric market is estimated to hit US$7.4 billion by 2012, up from US$3 billion in 2007. The largest markets are in Asia and North America. The use of biometric technologies, especially that in conjunction with smart card for identification purpose, will be more and more widespread. I believe later on one of our speakers will tell us more on "smart cards".

The Position of Hong Kong

Back in 2004, I read an article that predicted that the next hundred years would be the "biometric century" It was in fact the picture we saw by that time because the Government of HKSAR was implementing several strategic, long-term and mission critical projects. Biometric technology is at the heart of these projects. The multi-application smart identity card, with more than 7 million issued to-date, is an important information infrastructure of Hong Kong. Among other functions, it enables the automated passenger and vehicular clearance at the e-Channels. Face recognition technology was also employed for immigration clearance of truck drivers. It is now being pilot tested on immigration clearance of drivers and passengers on-board private cars. The biometric technologies of the smart identity card has helped 128 millions passengers and 8 millions truck drivers to use the self-service immigration clearance at the e-Channels. Obviously some of these are repeating users. The HKSAR electronic passport project was rolled-out in February this year getting Hong Kong on-board the bandwagon of the international trend of putting biometric technology in the passport.

These projects have put Hong Kong to the forefront of applying biometric technologies and helped build the foundation for the biometric infrastructure of Hong Kong. The Hong Kong SAR Government is committed to promoting advanced technology and innovation so as to develop Hong Kong as a leading digital city in a globally connected world, and ingraining IT in the business of government bureaux and departments to provide efficient and user-friendly services to citizens. We have established an electronic authentication framework for government use, and the plan is to publish a similar framework for public reference this year. We are also looking into the feasibility of having a unified identity management framework in delivery e-government services. No doubt biometrics, together with the myriad of other relevant technologies will play an important role in implementing these frameworks.

Making biometrics more functional and cost-effective

Although each of the biometric technologies has its characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, we believe that, with the continuous effort of the industry and the academia to improve the algorithms, the False Acceptance Rate, the False Rejection Rate and the sensor technologies, uni-modal and multi-modal biometrics can be more functional and cost effective. Biometric technologies may one day enable our customers or citizens to transact with us using just their biometrics and a ubiquitous sensor device such as keyboard, webcam and mobile phone.

Common Considerations: Interoperability, Security and Privacy

Most biometric technologies have their roots to proprietary algorithms, format and even sensor equipment. Though interoperability and data interchange among products are not easy at this stage, international standards are fast evolving which should help alleviate vendor lock-in and protect investment. Examples are the standards recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Indeed, the subject of Public Biometric Infrastructure (PBI), controversial as it may sound, is receiving attention in some industry discussions.

Privacy and security fear are fundamental concerns in biometric deployment because biometrics is traditionally associated with the capability to linking and tracking a person. I am glad to learn that some of our speakers will share with us their experiences on these areas. HKSAR is one of the early places in deploying biometrics in smart identity card. The implementation of the smart identity card of HKSAR has gone through the scrutiny of a number of security reviews, security audits and privacy impact assessments. Besides, the Government has also conducted intensive consultation with the Legislative Council and the public as well as intensive publicity programmes to strengthen the public confidence on security and privacy. Unlike other countries which are still debating on the need for a national ID system and the threat to civil liberties, the general public of Hong Kong have already passed the anticipation and confirmation stages of a biometric evolution. They have personally experienced how biometric technologies can bring value to them. This has built a good foundation for more and better adoption of biometric technologies in Hong Kong.

Conclusion

The increasing demand for biometric technologies by large and long term strategic projects will bring down the price of advanced biometric technology to a more affordable level for commercial or even personal applications. With biometric technologies deployed with due consideration and caution paid on security and privacy, we can provide services and customer experience in ways we cannot provide before. I'm sure the Conference today will provide a good opportunity for exchanging views and innovative ideas on the further development and application of the biometric technologies.

Finally, I would like to congratulate the IT Division of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers for organizing this meaningful event. I wish you all a fruitful and enjoyable conference. To our overseas speakers and participants, I wish you a most enjoyable stay in Hong Kong.

Thank you.

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