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Canadian Air Transport Security Authority
Restricted Area Identification Card for Airport Workers
Canada Now Leads the World in Airport Security, Since the Creation of a Biometric Scanning System to Authorize Workers
Challenge
Security is a top priority of airports around the world. The Canadian government created an aviation security authority in response to the events of September 11, 2001. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) provides security screening services at airports across Canada, screening 37 million passengers, 800,000 non-passengers and 60 million pieces of checked luggage annually.
CATSA's five-year budget is $2.2 billion and it has 228 employees in its Ottawa headquarters. The 4,000 screening officers located at airports are the employees of CATSA service providers.
CATSA was given responsibility by the Minister of Transport in November 2002 to develop a program to reduce the risk of unauthorized persons gaining access to the restricted areas of Canada's 29 major airports.
At that time, airports issued restricted-area passes to airport workers, which were validated using a manual process in the majority of airports. Guards would inspect cards to ensure that information on the card matched the card holder. Then the guard would look up the card number on a list, while the worker waited at the entrance to the workplace, to determine whether the individual should be provided access. This process was inefficient and prone to error.
CATSA set out to implement a uniform biometric system across airports to improve efficiency and facilitate transit of the 115,000 airport workers while improving security. A significant challenge was that each airport already had an existing security system, with which the new national system would need to communicate.
Solution
Starting from scratch, CATSA designed an innovative program called RAIC (Restricted Area Identity Card). It has proved to be a dramatic improvement in both security and efficiency.
The RAIC system is a complex network of infrastructure and processes. Implementation began in September 2004 and has proceeded at a careful pace, because no such system has ever been created before. By mid-2006 RAIC was deployed at 10 airports and was scheduled to be completely deployed, in compliance with new federal regulations, at all major airports by the end of December.
The system relies on a central database linking the 29 airports via a secure private network operated by TELUS. The RAIC team overcame a difficult technological challenge to design interfaces so that the system can communicate with the existing access control systems - 19 different ones - already in use by the various airports.
This national system is used to assign and verify a unique numerical identifier for each worker, wherever they go. A pilot, for example, is identified by the same security code at any major Canadian airport. The RAIC system takes security much further, to institute dual-stage verification of security clearance status, by also identifying workers using biometrics -- the automated use of physiological or behavioral characteristics to determine or verify identity.
Starting in 2007, when a worker at an airport using the RAIC system approaches an airport entrance, he or she carries a smart card with a chip containing templates of her fingerprint and iris, along with the unique numerical identifier. The worker waves the card in front of a reader, then verifies her identity either by touching a fingerprint reader or having a digital photo taken of her iris. This takes about three seconds.
Results
The RAIC system has significantly enhanced the security of travelling Canadians. It uses innovative technology and processes to completely remove the element of human error out of securing access to restricted areas of airports. Guards no longer have to be responsible for making subjective decisions based on incomplete information. The smart cards are nontransferable since pass holders have to identify themselves with their fingerprint or their iris. If the card doesn't work, the person cannot enter.
In addition to being able to confirm a cardholder's identity, the biggest benefit of RAIC is the ability to update the security clearance status of all 115,000 airport workers instantly at major airports across the country, replacing a system that provided weekly updates.
Before RAIC, individuals could have multiple cards at multiple airports. This made them difficult to track. Since systems across the country will now be consistent and linked, multi-airport passes will be implemented, which will have significant cost and time savings for airports and airport personnel.
The system dramatically reduces the time that workers must take to pass through entrances to get to their jobs and improves the efficiency of the process. Some airports have installed entrances with one door to be unlocked to approach the scanning machine and a second door to exit, so that one guard can monitor several of these automated entrances using video cameras. This has cut labour costs substantially.
Innovative Use of Technology
CATSA has achieved a technological advance in airport security that leads the world. RAIC is the world's first dual biometric smart-card program to be deployed on a national scale.
Biometric expertise and technical integration for the RAIC project have been provided by Unicom Inc. of Quebec City, while Acme-Futures Security Controls Inc. of Ottawa is the supplier of biometric hardware. Although the fingerprint and iris readers are standard products, they had never before been made to integrate with both an individual airport system and a national network.
The system is being studied by other countries and the airport security industry is moving toward the use of smart cards with biometrics imbedded in the smart chips, a decision made by CATSA in 2002.
A 2006 CIPA Winner!
For its exceptional application of information technology to transform its processes and bring benefits to the public, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has been named as the winner of the 2006 CIPA Exceptional Innovation Award.
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