Indonesia launches Biometric Verification for Border Control

The Directorate General of Immigration at the Department of Law and Human Rights in Indonesia, locally known as Imigrasi, has launched a border control system that includes biometrics capture at 27 of the nation’s air and sea ports.

The system, SITA iBorders, should significantly improve Indonesia’s control of its borders through additional checking of watch lists, verification of passports, visas and permits, and integration of visa issue.

Most importantly, the capture of biometrics from travellers, specifically facial images and fingerprints, will now give the added security that the person at the border is the one who has been checked against all the databases.

 “This new primary line clearance system from SITA significantly raises the level of security at Indonesia’s international borders. The use of biometrics adds an extra element to the identification and verification of arrivals. We can now be confident that people match passports,” Erwin Azis, Director of Immigration Information Systems, Imigrasi. “The unrivalled experience SITA has in both border management and the air transport industry, has ensured that we now have border control that is fast and convenient for passengers and most importantly is highly secure.”

The first airport, Adisucipto International Airport serving Yogyakarta in Java, has just gone live with the system and the remaining ports are expected to be up and running by June. When the roll out is complete more than 300 workstations across 27 air and sea ports will be live and will process the vast majority of Indonesia’s approximately 20 million passenger movements across its international borders.

Dan Ebbinghaus, SITA Vice President, Government and Security Solutions, said, “Our relationship with Imigrasi continues to strengthen since 2007 when we first introduced a system to manage watch lists and carry out name searches. We have now extended this with our biometric solution which will help the Indonesian authorities verify that the person who is before them, and who was checked against the watch lists and various document databases, truly is who they say they are.”

The Imigrasi solution uses components of the new iBorders BioThenticate product suite, which was launched on Tuesday at the Passenger Terminal EXPO in Brussels. This new platform is designed specifically for the airport environment. It seamlessly integrates biometric identity management into all aspects of passenger processing at airports, including secure self-service check-in, bag drop and boarding. It also integrates with airport security, terminal access control, immigration and other border management functions. The result is that a passenger using a single biometric credential, such as a smartcard or ePassport, can check-in, pass through security, pass through immigration, and board the aircraft, verifying their identity at each step of the journey.

In addition, governments can use iBorders BioThenticate to combine real-time capture of biometric identity with intelligent analysis of airline passenger data. This presentation of meaningful data from multiple sources to immigration officers enables rapid and accurate decision making at the border.

Indonesia is one of a growing number of countries that use SITA's advanced border management systems including Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Kuwait, Mongolia, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain and the United States of America.

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