The European Biometrics Portal: a WIKI tool for the biometrics

Brussels, 25 May 2006

In April 2006, the European Biometrics Portal (EBP), established by the European Commission, completed its first sixth months of activity. Its aim is to encourage and support the exchange of information and data on biometric technology initiatives, deployments and trials. EBP is open to information coming from all over the world, even if its main focus is European.

Entirely developed by using Open Source components, the EBP is "Wikipedian": it is likely to be the first instrument located inside the virtual EUROPA domain, allowing experts from industry, governments or universities to share biometrics news, reports or invitations to workshops.

After 6 months of activity, the portal is widely visited (around 40,000 pages visited every month) and visitors have already made several hundreds of contributions (articles, reports, news items, event notices). A very positive finding resulting from this approach: none of the contributions was out of scope (e.g. containing just political or controversial opinions) and all demonstrated a real concern to provide valuable relevant technical, legal and ethical elements.

With the EBP, the Commission has provided the biometric user community a platform to exchange experiences and best practices, and inform about available technologies and state of the art practices. This effort is still in its first stages of productivity, and will be evolving further in the coming months.

The European Biometrics Portal

DG Information Society
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