WALL, New Jersey and DHAKA, Bangladesh, November 26 /PRNewswire/ --
-- Solution Prevents Duplicate Registrations and Issues Voter Rolls and National ID Cards
BIO-key International, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: BKYI), a leader in finger-based biometric identification and wireless public safety, and Tiger IT BD Ltd. (Tiger IT), a leader in both prepackaged and customized software solutions, today announced that they have been awarded an exclusive contract for the biometric-based credentialing solution for the Bangladesh Voter Registration Project. This solution is being used to prepare voter rolls and issue national ID cards in preparation for Bangladesh's general elections to be held in 2008.
The initial implementation of the solution has successfully registered and issued national ID cards for nearly 5 million people and demonstrated the creation of local voter rolls for the election. The registration process, which is designed to be convenient for citizens, incorporates a timesaving pre-registration step as well as scheduled appointment times to enroll each citizen's biometric information including photograph, four fingerprints and signature. The biometric enrollment process takes about 5 to 6 minutes per person.
"Tiger IT's implementation of WEB-key(R) performed above expectations. Operating at more than 1 million matches per second on a single processor, it accurately identified duplicate registrations," said Ziaur Rahman, Managing Director of Tiger IT. "This performance, combined with the outstanding methodology developed by the Bangladesh Army to collect and process the data, sets the stage to complete the nationwide registration by the summer of 2008."
Beyond establishing more accurate voter rolls to facilitate the upcoming election in 2008, the ability to verify one's identity provides significant benefits in the course of each citizen's daily life. For example, the National ID card is used by each citizen to access up to 22 different services managed or offered by the government. The National ID card also includes a standard barcode encoded with ISO fingerprint templates and PKI digital hash that can be used to quickly verify the identity of the cardholder and the integrity and authenticity of the ID card.
"Tiger IT, BIO-key and Cognitec, in fulfilling their technical promises in the first phase, have demonstrated they can ensure high quality enrollment data by deploying a powerful identity management solution that delivers accurate, high-speed alias detection on a large scale," commented Major General Shafiq, Military Secretary of the Bangladesh Army. "Their expertise will be valuable as we begin the nationwide rollout of the solution."
This next phase of the project, scheduled to begin in November, will register up to 100 million people, making it the largest biometric enrollment initiative in the world. This will involve more than 20,000 personnel, 500 ID management servers developed by Tiger IT, and over 8,000 laptop computers equipped with Tiger IT enrollment software, BIO-key's fingerprint ID software and FBI certified fingerprint readers. BIO-key's WEB-key development platform will be used in stages to detect duplicate registrations.
"BIO-key is pleased to assist Bangladesh to produce voter rolls and identity cards," stated Michael DePasquale, President and CEO of BIO-key. "The consistency and reliability of our VST and WEB-key platforms, including our Intelligent Image Indexing(TM) technology, have been instrumental in the deployment of this large scale national initiative to register voters and detect duplicates to ensure a free and fair election. This contract award is a major inflection for our company and a validation of the technologies that we have developed over the past 10 years. BIO-key's large scale ID platform is now being considered for a host of additional projects around the world as we are able to provide superior accuracy, speed and scalability with minimal hardware infrastructure."
About BIO-key
BIO-key International, Inc., headquartered in Wall, New Jersey, develops and delivers advanced identification solutions and information services to law enforcement departments, public safety agencies, government and private sector customers. BIO-key's mobile wireless technology provides first responders with critical, reliable, real-time data and images from local, state and national databases. BIO-key's high performance, scalable, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy biometric fingerprint identification technology accurately identifies and authenticates users of wireless and enterprise data to improve security, convenience and privacy and to reduce identity theft. Over 750 police departments in North America use BIO-key solutions, making BIO-key the leading supplier of mobile and wireless solutions for law enforcement. (http://www.bio-key.com)
About Cognitec Systems,
Cognitec Systems with headquarters in Dresden, Germany, and offices in Herndon, VA; Miami, FL; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, develops and markets the well-established and world-leading FaceVACS(R) face recognition software.
Cognitec Systems Corporation
13800 Coppermine Road, Herndon, VA 20171
Roger Kelesoglu, Senior Business Development Executive
roger@cognitec.com
Phone: +1-978-692-1251
+1-305-629-3113
About Tiger IT
Tiger IT BD Ltd., headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is a full-service developer of enterprise software applications and solutions for both government agencies and the private sector. Tiger IT is routinely considered by many to employ the most experienced and capable development team in Bangladesh. Some of the end-customers that benefit from Tiger IT include global Fortune 500 corporations. Tiger IT's US counterpart has recently signed a 4 million dollar contract to prevent online media piracy using a solution developed primarily in Bangladesh.
(http://tigeritbd.com)
This news release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected on the basis of these statements. The words "estimate," "project," "intends," "expects," "believes" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management pursuant to the "safe-harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For a more complete description of these and other risk factors that may affect the future performance of BIO-key International, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-KSB and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company also undertakes no obligation to disclose any revision to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
Company Contact: BIO-key International, Inc.
Bud Yanak
+1-732-359-1100
Web site: http://www.bio-key.com
http://www.tigeritbd.com
Bud Yanak of BIO-key International, Inc., +1-732-359-1100; or Roger Kelesoglu, Senior Business Development Executive of Cognitec Systems, +1-978-692-1251, +1-305-629-3113, roger@cognitec.com
