Using biometrics as a method of authenticating information for e-governments

By Ines Paternina
Spring 2011


I. ABSTRACT

Governments eagerness to minimize bureaucracy and develop a government centered on its citizens, has been trying to implement what is known as e-government. They are trying to provide information and services through internet and other computer resources. However, the information handled by government agencies can be more sensitive, private, and/or confidential than any private e-business. It requires more controls and a higher level of security to be implemented. For that reason, governments are implementing methods for authenticating information based on the user’s knowledge (password, pass-phrase or PIN), possession (smart card), and identity (biometric measurement).

Biometrics is the most controversial method, since it’s perceived as an invasive technique, as well as expensive to implement. It raises concerns about how private and safe the government can keep their identification records, and who will have access to this information. Privacy advocates aren’t quite sure about the general public sharing their personal information with government agencies and other private parties involved in these applications. As author Juliet Lodege’s paradox explains, while you are protecting access to information, you are also sharing your most valuable information, “your identity”.
Therefore, strategies to be analyzed are those created by governments to develop trust in users based on the improvement of biometrics technologies (components and modalities) and the implementation of laws and regulations over privacy information control and accuracy standards. Among other issues, this paper will analyze business solutions, achievements, challenges and management considerations when using biometrics as a method of authenticating information for e-government implementing biometrics.

II. METHODOLOGY
This investigation will be focus on the applications, strategies, solutions, regulations and challenges of the United States and the European Union e-governments. A deductive reasoning method will be implemented to analyze valuable information available on government’s web sites and scholarly materials related with the subject.


III. OUTLINE

I. ABSTRACT 2
II. METHODOLOGY 2
III. OUTLINE 3
IV. INTRODUCTION 4
A. What is e-government? 4
1. Definition 4
2. Objectives 4
B. The trust problem 4
1. Responsibilities and Reliability 4
2. Common questions and solutions 5
C. “Biometrics” an answer to the trust problem or just another problem? 6
V. FINDINGS 6
A. The biometric process and technology 7
1. How biometrics works? 7
2. Biometrics Modalities 8
3. Accuracy standards 8
B. Usage of biometrics 9
1. Where is biometrics being used? 9
2. Biometrics on e-Government services 9
3. E-Authentication vs Authorization 10
C. Evolution of laws and regulations over biometrics on United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. 11
D. Biometrics applications for the e-government. 12
1. Achievements 12
2. Projections and Challenges 14
3. Management considerations 17
VI. DISCUSSION CONCLUSIONS 20
VII. REFERENCES 21

IV. INTRODUCTION

A. What is e-government?

1. Definition

Analyzing all the definitions presented by Khosrowpour (2005) and Wikipedia, a combine definition for e-government should be established per its users, goals, and methods and technologies to be applied or used. A compiled summary of all the definitions founded for “electronic government” is “the use by government agencies of information and communication technologies (ICTs: Wide Area Networks, the Internet, mobile computing, audio-visual and telephone networks, and all its interactions or combinations) to transform the structures and operation of government and its relations with citizens (G2C), businesses (G2B), other government agencies (G2G), religious movements or churches (G2R), and households (G2H).”

2. Objectives

With these the governments would pretend to increase the citizen’s participation and user’s convenience, guarantee transparent transactions, cost reductions by reducing bureaucratic process, and allowing the empowerment of users and guaranteeing an efficient use of government’s information and management of democracy.

B. The trust problem

1. Responsibilities and Reliability

Therefore, the e-government and its subcontractors have to assure the security and data integrity during its transmission (input and output), storage and usage. Likewise, the citizens, business, religious organizations and internal users have to guarantee the reliability of the information provided and the proper usage of the information obtained .
In fact, Song-Korba-Yee et al (2007) states “Examining the trust problem in the context of e-services is even harder than investigating trust in computer systems because solutions must take into account the dynamic nature of a distributed system, the fact that consumers may be prior strangers, the need to establish trust on both the service provider and consumer side, and the fact that there is a greater incentive to subvert valued, one-off services (…).” Consequently, all the participants should have clear their responsibilities and duties just as clear as their rights and requirements.

2. Common questions and solutions
Moreover, all the e-government process will require trust from all participants (providers, keepers, analysts, users, customers and stakeholders). Actually, some of the questions to be analyzed in regards of the safety and reliability of information before start implementing e-government are shown on the graphic 1:



A way to reduce the trust problem and provide an answer to some to these questions is by assuring to users/clients the implementation of security measures to control access on the system, deter intruders, and protect storage data, by using back up programming, firewalls, encryption and biometric techniques, and others.

C. “Biometrics” an answer to the trust problem or just another problem?

The word “biometrics” is used alternatively to describe a characteristic or a process. On this paper the word “biometrics” will refer to the process: “As a process: a biometric is an automated method of recognizing an individual based on measurable biological (anatomical and physiological) and behavioral characteristics.”

Biometrics is one of the alternatives to guarantee a reliable data entered in the system, which also can be use to control access to data information storage and obtain information processed. Also, this method requires that the client have to comply to provide access his/her anatomical and physiological identity information. Which can discourage those who aren’t quite sure about how well this information will be used or protected, and will give a clearer face to the trust problem known as “privacy issue”.

Paraphrasing Song-Korba-Yee (2007) as soon as the information is disclosed, the provider doesn’t have total control over it, therefore the privacy is lost. Therefore, to clarify this doubt is a goal of this document to analyze how the administrators of “biometrics” systems, will be assuring the acquisition of reliable information and at same time guaranteeing the safeness of the information providing confidence and privacy to users and clients with in e-government for United States and Europe.



V. FINDINGS

A. The biometric process and technology


1. How biometrics works?

A brief explanation of the biometrics system process and components:

Step 1- Collection: The process starts with the user enrollment or authorization to allow the capture of the physical attribute. The capture will be effective by using a sensor that transforms the sample to a digital form. Some biometrics system can require multiple captures of the same or different features to guarantee the quality of the sample.

Step 2- Extraction and Storage: Once it was digitalized the sample is analyzed by a signal processing algorithm used to extract unique characteristics of the sample and convert them to a template. This template is storage under high security levels. The data storage component should be capable of save a large number of templates (depending on the number of users required).



Step3- Comparison and verification: The templates saved will be used again when recognition of an individual is needed. The individual repeat step 1 and 2 to obtain a new template. This one is compared with one or more templates on the data base using a matching algorithm. The verification can be close-set (person information should be on data base) or open-set (system operator can’t assure that the individual information be on the data base or not).

Step 4- Recognition and identification: The recognition will be positive or not depending of the similarities found between the templates by using the matching component. This decision process can be done by an automatic system or human-assisted. If automated, the responsibility is transfer to computers instead of relay on human senses, memory or expertise


2. Biometrics Modalities

There are different biometrics modalities. The most common and know is the fingerprint. There are others based on the recognition of face, iris, voice, signature, and hand geometry. Most of them are still under development and assessment; the researchers are trying to establish an easy and economic applications and hardware. The interest of this research paper is not analyzing each one of these modalities; therefore, they will be only mentioned here.




3. Accuracy standards

There are standards created to establish definitions, formats, applications, perform tests, evaluate metrics, formulate algorithms, and other important concepts to clarify operational requirements and methods for a specific system. They are required to allow the interchangeability and interoperability of components between different devices produced by different manufacturers and in different countries.
The biometrics’ standards had being defined by national and international organizations such as: the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in US, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and others. They all look for the establishment of rules or guidelines to control the implementation and operation of the biometric technologies. This document will be referring to some of their guidelines as references.


B. Usage of biometrics


1. Where is biometrics being used?
The biometrics is currently being implemented in process related with national security, homeland security, law enforcement, and enterprise and e-government services and also on private companies on regular business transactions. Mostly, it is being used also to secure areas or maintain time records.

2. Biometrics on e-Government services
In the e-government services, just within the state of Florida there are more than 100 services offered online, for example: as simple as a job search or look for employer information online, as important like pay bills, taxes, traffic tickets, as dangerous as localize sex offenders, as private as register to vote, some of them requires high levels of accuracy as register to visit inmates, and some other as the related with the health will require high levels of confidentiality.
The next graphic, helps to define briefly the e-government process, showing the government as the processor of all data information provided by citizens, business and other interested organizations and controlled by techniques such as biometrics:




3. E-Authentication vs Authorization

It’s easy to confuse these two terms; in fact, most of the biometrics’ literature isn’t clear about it. NSTC’s glossary (2006) explain authentication as “the process of establishing confidence in the truth of some claim. The claim could be any declarative statement” for example: “This is Mr. Biehl’s signature”. Wikipedia explain authorization as “verifying that an authenticated subject has permission to perform certain operations or access specific resources” for example: “After identify his signature, Mr. Biehl is authorized to obtain all access and permits of a UCF’s faculty member.”

As the authorization take place after the authentication, the term “authorization” it is usually used to refer to both actions. In this article, the word “authorization” will imply the amalgamation of both actions.


C. Evolution of laws and regulations over biometrics on United States, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Ever since the first attempts to develop the biometrics technology, there had being also instructions and methods published by the experts and validated by the government in charge of it. However, there wasn’t a formal presence of regulators organisms until the 9/11 event happened, which made the world turn looking for secure methods to control access to countries, places and information.
On 2002, the ISO/IEC standards subcommittee and M1 Technical Committee on biometrics were established. After that on 2003 the US government starts the formal coordination of biometrics activities and at the same time the European Biometrics Forum was establish.
On 2004 one of the most famous applications of biometrics the US- VISIT program becomes operational and the same year using Presidential directives the US government calls for mandatory government-wide personal identification card for all federal employees and contractors.
There are several Presidential Directives and government documents published online . One of the most important is the Presidential directive called “(NSPD)-59 / Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) – 24, “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security,”. Paraphrasing the explanation on the www.biometrics.gov for this directive “this directive establishes a structure to guarantee Federal departments and agencies use attuned methods and procedures in the compilation, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and linked biographic and contextual information of individuals in a lawful and appropriate manner, while respecting privacy and other legal rights under United States law. “
Europe and the United Kingdom, also have documents providing guide line not only to the biometrics technology, also to the contractors and users of these technologies. Europe has the Data Protection Directive as the principal guide line to control ICT’s. United Kingdom’s model require that all the organization (third parties) processing or working with personal data information be register (it have to be done every year & they must pay a fee) and this information goes to the public register of data controllers. Some examples of these types of organization are: Health administration, legal services, credit analysts, private investigation, education, justice administration, crime prevention and prosecution of offender among others.


D. Biometrics applications for the e-government.


1. Achievements

The government had been using for many years biometrics to secure access to military property and nuclear plants. Also, it had being used when identity management is needed for example: to identify death people and murderess with evidence on the crime scene. Biometrics are being used too in others transactions that require high security levels as using credit cards and cashing checks. Recently, with the increase of electronics applications for the e-government applications related with Logical (virtual) access control like: Local Area Network, Records (medical, human resources, education, etc), Stand-alone, and others computer-based systems.
Urdiales (2010) analyze the usage of behavioral characteristics such as signature recognition and its application on the European Union to increase the participation of the youngest population in e-government services on process such as online elections or e-vote. The Dynamic Signature Verification (DSV) system was considered by Urdiales (2010) as the most feasible biometric method to access and validate identity. It is without doubt the less controversial, non-intrusive, and economic biometric method. However, it still being vulnerable to an insider attacks, by someone with profound knowledge of the system.
The Department of Homeland Security of US with the collaboration of Australia and New Zealand’s government tested successfully on 2006 the “e-passport” alternative, which combine contactless chips with biographic and biometric information. In 2010, the e-password contains a chip loaded with digital image files of biometric information (facial, fingerprints, iris and or retina recognition) that will be read and analyzed by the e-border control system. This was designed under international standards such as ISO/IEC 14443, to allow its compatibility between different countries and device’s fabricators. By 2011, countries as Netherlands, Albania and Brazil had a national identification cards totally based on biometrics measurements that can work as travel documents.
The biometrics technologies are also used to control the entrance of security level employees to restricted areas. For example: The San Francisco International Airport (SFIA), had being using hand geometry readers for more than 10 years, way before than the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (TSA) was created. Today, the SFIA is an example in the usage of this technology, with followers as the Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia. Organizations like these had validated the efficiency of this technology; Yeager shows savings of more than $1,200 per day only by replacing a 24hr security guard for a hands reader system , proving that the usage of this technology isn’t only more secure, but also can help to save some money.
Other example of how biometrics is being used in e-government is with the control of welfare benefits. The food stamp is a card that can be easily sold or changed and used by other people. To avoid fraud in states like California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, among others, had implemented the usage of fingerprints to control the delivery and receipt of food benefits. This technology is spreading, and some states as Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are trying to follow these steps too.
Within Florida, to control access to controlled sites as The Port of Palm Beach, the state has implemented hand reader technology. An individual is allowed to enter five times within 90 days. This technology, allows to speed up the verification process and easily is capable of detect any infractions. In Sarasota County, the county detention center has implemented the iris recognition technology to control register and transportations of inmates. This enhances the ability of locating, processing, and securing a prisoner, as well as assuring a correct release process without any security breaks.

2. Projections and Challenges

a. Projections

The biometrics application had proof its effectiveness towards identity verification and access control, as we saw earlier. It’s easy to find proofs of the biometrics methods applied as a trustworthy method to identify people, as were described before.
However, the expectations are high related with its future applications, specially, with in Government-to-Government, Government-to-Business, and Government-to- Citizens process. For example: authentication of users to obtain access, secure online transactions, exchange of information, revocation of access privileges, restring access to individuals account or personal information, etc.
Therefore, to continue with this research we are going to analyze its challenges on the next section.

b. Challenges

Some implementation barriers toward the biometrics on the e-government are:
1) Privacy and its legal’s controls, regulations and rights have not been explained and communicated to users:

Therefore, Lodge (2007) explains the proximity paradox and the privacy questions that a common user can have about all the applications of the biometrics technology. She analyzes how an abuse of power should be avoided, demanding democratic accountability, liberty, and security of information. One of the issues that she brings to the table is that nowadays for a person to obtain a visa, it has to come through a mandatory taking of biometrics characteristics. The user has to do this most of the time, without understanding the system, just to obtain a visa.

As an answer to concerns like these, Europe established directives to protect processing of personal data, being the most recent the Data Protection Directive of 1998 (DPD). Kuechler (2002) explains that DPD “controls how, within the European Union, data regarding living individuals can be acquired, stored, transmitted, and processed”. This directive covers all organizations working in EU, even if their central office is in a country outside EU. The United Kingdom has a variation of this directive, which in addition to the minimum requirements also requests an annual registration to all the organizations handling personal and confidential data.
Analyzing this problem within the US government, we will have to mention the Privacy Act that covers all “US citizens” but it doesn’t include information of non-us citizens. However, we can find information about regulation planted by different federal agencies such as the mission of the DHS Privacy Office which state “Privacy Office is to preserve and enhance privacy protections for all individuals, to promote transparency of Department operations, and to serve as a leader in the federal privacy community.”

This intention is supported by the NSTC (2006) stating “A privacy protection analysis would focus on the understanding of the system upon first choosing to participate in the system (assuming participation is voluntary) and the actions taken regarding that individual based on matching conducted by the system.” (…) “a privacy protective environment would advocate the collection of the least amount of personal information necessary to reliably drive the decision.”

However, the privacy policies for the e-government were legalized under the E-Government Act of 2002, effective since April 17, 2003, which describes as an individual US citizens and aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence and covers “all executive branch departments and agencies and their contractors that use information technology or that operate websites for purposes of interacting with the public; relevant cross-agency initiatives, including those that further electronic government.”

Even though, the governments had creating legislations to regulate and assure privacy for the e-users. Most of the population doesn’t have enough knowledge or understanding of the biometrics process. There has being a misinformation about the impact on the development of a biometrics systems and the scope of the e-government. The user should be trained or informed in how the biometrics process and system works. Also, the user will have to be informed in its security measures, and the governmental regulations established to manage it (establishing why, how, when it can be used?).

The NSTC (2006) worded this challenge as:”1) Fundamental understanding of biometrics technologies, operational requirements and privacy principles to enable beneficial public debate on where and how biometrics systems should be used. 2) Embed privacy functionality into every layer of the architecture from the sensor through the system to the interoperable biometrics network. 3) Privacy-protective solutions that meet operational needs enhance public confidence in biometrics technology and safeguard personal information.”

Therefore, all these drive us to the need to educate users about the biometric systems and the regulations implemented. This will increase the confidence and reduce the fear to this technology and its applications. Also, there are other challenges as the following:

2) Architecture:

The collection device (sensors) needs to be improved to develop a more efficient gathering of information. Also, the plug and play systems needs to be standardized. Additionally, the biometric system needs to be adapted for its implementation in a large scale.

Paraphrasing NSTC (2006) the US government had established challenges to promote the improvement of the process of collection of biometric data such as: “Implementation of a new generation of biometric sensors to collect in less than 15 seconds face, finger, and iris data, under mobile conditions and harsh environments, meeting technical, safety and quality standards by being able to communicate with other systems components and self-adjustment to the operating environment. They won’t have failures to enroll, will be low cost, easy to use and to integrate into existing systems, strong enough to resist extreme conditions, they’ll be able to obtain data without contact or after self-sterilizing, and more.”

3) Resources:

One of the hardest issues to implement a biometric system is the budget needed. Therefore, there is a challenge related with this problem, NSTC (2006) present it as the establishment of “Return on Investment (ROI) models for various applications to aid in determining the efficacy of incorporating biometrics”. This technology, the whole system and its components have to become cheaper to allow its implementation without any economic factor influencing its failure.

3. Management considerations

a. Parameters to evaluate and weight when implementing a biometric methodology


Chirillo (2003) explains the “User acceptance” as one of the primary issues to analyze when selecting a biometric technology. He also present to analyze the typical type of errors (I and II) and the crossover error rate (CER). He described the error Type I false reject as the system rejecting an authorized individual and the Type II false accept as the system accepting an unauthorized individual. The CER is the percentage rating of errors type I versus type II, while CER is lower the better accuracy achieved by the system.
One of the first concerns of the management when implementing a biometric technology is the economic factor. First, the analyst should evaluate the possible savings caused by the implementation of a biometric system by: reducing loss in the system, reducing cost caused by other security methods (e.g. security badges), reducing processing time and therefore a reduction of labor hours, as it was showed before with the Yeager Airport’s example. Second, the analyst should evaluate the available budget against the cost of selection, implementation, training and maintenance of the systems. The analyst should open a bid to receive multiple offers from contractors and select the best offer. However, depending on the security level required, the organization management should evaluate if it is better develop the implementation project with in-house resources instead of outsourcing it.
Additionally, other important parameter to consider is the evaluation of the environment in which is going to be implemented. This includes the acceptance of the users and the effectiveness depending on the conditions. For example, in a construction company, to control the worker’s access due that construction’s workers tend to have more variations in their hands geometry due injuries like hand blisters and other job implications like paint or oil stains, the “hands geometry” modality won’t be the most effective. Therefore, it will be better if each company analyze the effectiveness and the acceptance with an internal evaluation according with the organizational culture and environment.

b. Methodology to select the best modality to be implemented.

This document proposes a simple methodology to select the best methodology after measure each factor, similar to the used to calculate the Earned Value on a project.
It can be used with multiple factors. It consists basically of three steps:
1) Select the modalities to be evaluated.
2) Select the factors or parameters to analyze.
3) Evaluate each modality under each factor or parameter, from better to worst or 1 to n (being 1 the better and n the number of modalities evaluated).
4) Assign a weight to each modality per parameter evaluated.
5) Per each modality, individually multiply the weight of each factor.
6) The final value obtain for each modality will give the total weight. That value should be organized from lowest to highest.
7) The lowest weight will show the best option to implement.

As an example, we will use the acceptance and effectiveness values established by Chirillo (2003). The modalities were organized by weight from the most accepted to the least accepted (column 1 and 2) and from the most effective to the least effective (column 3 to 4). Chirillo (2003) weight them from 1 to 8, being 1 the best option and 8 the worst, this example will use this same rating. The total weight (in blue) was calculated by multiplying the two previous values (column 2 by column 4). In this case the “Iris Scan” was the best option and the “facial recognition” the worst:
Ranking for “Iris scan” = 1 x 2 = 2 and the ranking for “Facial recognition”= 5 x 6 = 30




VI. DISCUSSION CONCLUSIONS

The biometric technology and systems were slowly developed until the year 2001, in which after the 9/11 event, the governments realized on the importance of the establishment and control of security levels. Since that time the biometrics had being focused on “access control”, however, the different kinds of applications of the biometrics in the e-government still pending to be develop.

The development and implementation process of the biometrics technologies is being limited by the manufacture and implementation costs of biometric systems’ components which still are expensive considering the government’s budget restrictions. Also, another limit is the cultural and legal concern about the privacy of the biometric data and its safeness.

Therefore, to achieve a successful implementation of biometrics systems within the e-government, will be necessary the establishment of more user oriented legislation and the development of educational campaigns to spread the knowledge about the biometrics systems requirements, possible risks, standards and legislations applicable, how to use them, and any other information required to clarify the users’ concerns.

The implementation of a biometric system should be evaluated independently per each organization and group of users, because their needs and their reasons to implement it are different. Also, their requirements vary depending on the organizational culture, environment, budget, and goals.

Additionally, improve the usage of biometrics to electronically authenticate information will allow the governments to simplify procedures based on the users (citizens, business, and the government itself), by reducing a huge amount of bureaucratic procedures, and getting closer to people.



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