The main objective of BEST NETWORK is to bring together knowledge and hands-on experience with biometric deployments, addressing gaps in the gathering and dissemination of best practices, lessons learned in the scope of studies, pilots and deployments on European and Member States level.
BEST Network will provide policy recommendations relevant to the key questions referred to in the introduction. To achieve this, the Network is comprised of two parts, each of which is composed of a number of working groups(WG). Thus, an application oriented part (WG1-4) will focus on specific application areas, while a topical part (WG5-7) will interact with WG1-4 in order to bring matters such as ethics, legislation, data protection, training, education, testing and evaluation into the context of the way biometrics are being used. This has resulted in the seven working groups of the BEST Network.
Thus, an application oriented part (WG1-4) and a topical part (WG5-7), are composed of the following working groups:
- WG1 Immigration and Border Control
- WG2 Emerging applications: access control, commercial services and surveillance
- WG3 European Registered Traveller programs
- WG4 Biometrics in eID and electronic transactions
The disciplines that will link into and interact with WG1-4 are:
- WG5 Training and Education
- WG6 Testing and Certification
- WG7 Ethical, Legal and Socio-technical aspects
The first large scale implementations of biometric Identity Management Systems already revealed four basic challenges requiring an EU-wide stakeholder approach:
1. State-of-the-art technologies are not mature enough to provide sufficient performance, accuracy, scalability, system reliability and usability
2. Insufficient commonly agreed quality assessment highlights the need for further testing, evaluation, and certification
3. New security problems have arisen including protection against ID theft, counter-spoofing
4. Ethical and privacy concerns and societal acceptance
The work of BEST Network will focus on promoting the development of new policy implementation schemes through working groups and workshops. Exchange of best practices will be facilitated, common cross border strategies will be developed and future pilot activities will be drafted and – if possible - defined and prepared. In addition, BEST Network will focus on test and use cases, and will work to address the possible shortcomings of current applications such as visa, passport and border control applications, while also assessing how best practise can be transferred to future developments including evolving applications such as eID and electronic services