£400m 'biometric borders' bidders revealed

BT and Raytheon will fight it out for the government's £400m e-Borders contract to build a system that will automatically assess the security risk of individuals boarding transport bound for the UK using travel industry passenger lists and intelligence databases.

The system will have access to advance passenger information from airlines, including name, date of birth, nationality and passport details, and this data will be cross-referenced against government databases before the individual boards a flight.

Biometric technology will also be used as part of e-Borders, with iris-scanning allowing for the fast-tracking of some registered and approved regular travellers through border and immigration controls in the UK.

Two consortia, led by BT and Raytheon, have now been shortlisted for the contract, which is due to be awarded in the summer of 2007.

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The BT Emblem team contains BT as prime contractor with Anite, Arinc, HP, Lockheed Martin and LogicaCMG. The Trusted Borders team is led by Raytheon and contains Accenture, Capgemini, Detica, Qinetiq, Serco and Steria.

The e-Borders programme will start rolling out core services to all major air, rail and sea ports by the end of 2010, with full coverage expected by the end of 2014.

Trials of the biometric technology are already underway with Project Iris and Project Semaphore.

Home Office minister Joan Ryan said in a statement: "This technology will help transform our immigration controls. E-Borders will play a vital part in safeguarding our borders - enabling us to track all those who enter and leave the UK while facilitating efficient and secure passage for legitimate travellers."