E-PASSPORT RECOMMENDED BY PARLIAMENTARY BODY

The e-Passport is a part of e-governance and a means to achieve a certain percentage of digital Bangladesh. Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Planning Ministry recommended e-Passport over Machine Readable Passport (MRP) on October 28, 2009 and yet we are to see coordination between the home ministry and the foreign ministry for serious action on paying heed to the committee's recommendation as it has come from the parliament for which we have waited for two long years from Oct. 29, 2006 to December 29, 2008. We have lost two years during the caretaker government while the world was busy issuing e-Passports. Even Bosina and Herzegovina have e-Passports where we have served as UN peacekeepers. Though we were not at war with anyone but we have still failed to issue e-Passports because we were at war with ourselves. Hopefully, we will not waste any time and immediately accept parliamentary recommendation as it has come from people's highest democratic platform.


The e-Passports are already being used in more than 70 countries worldwide. In ASEAN, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Thailand have issued e-Passports to its citizens. Thailand became the first Asian country to issue an ICAO compliant e-Passport on May 26, 2005. Cost of production of the Philippine e-Passport is the lowest in the world. President of India, Pratibha Patil, was the first Indian to receive e-Passport on June 25, 2009. Somalia was the first country on the African continent to have ePassport on October 10, 2006. The following are some of the countries with dates of introduction of e-Passports: Belgium (Oct. 2004); Australia and Sweden (Oct. 2005); Germany (Nov. 2005); UK (March 2006); France (April 2006); South Africa (April 8, 2009); Bosnia and Herzegovina (Oct.15, 2009); China (Dec. 29, 2008); and USA (Aug. 2007). Though Malaysia was the first country in the world to issue biometric passport in 1998, it was not compliant to ICAO standards.
An ePassport has an embedded microchip in the centre page and a silver coat of arms and international ePassport symbol or logo on the front cover. The logo symbolises that the passport has an integrated circuit or chip. The chip embedded in the centre page stores the holder's digitised photograph, name, gender, date of birth, nationality, passport number, and the passport expiry date. This is exactly the same information that appears on the printed data page of the passport. It also contains biometrics. Biometrics are the unique and measurable physical characteristics of an individual that include face recognition, finger prints and iris scans. E-Passport's microchip data include: 1) personal data found on the data page of the passport; 2) biometrics of the passport holder; 3) the unique chip identification number; and 4) a digital signature to verify the authenticity of the data stored on the chip.


The e-Passport offers several important advantages. It provides greater protection against fraudulent misuse and tampering; reduces the risk of identity fraud, currently estimated to cost the economy billions each year; and enhances the protection of border through speedy and secure verification of incoming passport holders.
Australia is a member of the ICAO Machine Readable Travel Document Technical Advisory Group (MRTD TAG) and has played a prominent role in the development of the ICAO standards for e-Passports (http://www.dfat.au/dept/passports). If Bangladesh needs technical advice, the Australian High Commission in Dhaka could be approached for further help in this business from Canberra. Australia's first e-Passport was introduced in October 2005. It is a leader in the development of biometric passport technology, and was one of the first countries to introduce an ePassport. The chip, and the equipment which reads it, have been manufactured to standards set by the ICAO.


According to bdnews24.com, two blacklisted companies have been selected by Bangladesh government for issuing MRPs. As the Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended ditching the MRP project and advised to go for ePassports, the companies could be informed of the new recommendation and they should be pointed out of their lack of qualifications and machines to bid in the first place. Reviewers who allowed bidders without qualifying requirements to bid should be penalised as well because it not only wasted the government's time and money but also has put its citizens in deep uncertainty. If there is long term conspiracy behind this action as well, then the Prime Minister needs to look into the matter from its origin, when she had approved the project on March 19, 2009. At that time the whole government, and particularly the PM was extremely occupied with the Peelkhana massacre, the frustration within the Army and the shocking revelations of the atrocities carried out on Feb. 25-26, 2009 against BDR and their families. Whether allowing army to supervise was a wise decision can be questioned now after the way bidders have been selected. It is rather better not to involve the army in this regard at all. For processing national IDs and preparing voters' list, army was utilised because the serving government of the time was backed by the army, rather an army government A to Z in disguise. Now we have a civil democratic government and things should be done like other democratic governments do. For instance, India's e-Passport project is being managed by Tata Consulting Group (TCS) and Price Waterhouse Cooper. We can also go for local IT companies and expertise plus take help from countries like Australia or Germany who are technologically advanced in issuing e-Passports and very much involved in trade with us. If we do not want to go that far, we can give the job to India and discuss the issue with them during the visit in December, 2009. We can give the job to multiple countries with standard ICAO specification to expedite the process so that Bangladeshis can have e-Passports by April 2010 instead of opting for MRP.
The e-Passports need to be simultaneously available in Bangladesh and throughout all Bangladeshi missions abroad. This will take Bangladesh a long way to achieve digital Bangladesh.