Biometric Finger-Scanning to Monitor School Attendance

Biometric Finger-Scanning to Monitor School Attendance

Biometric finger scanning has been widely used in schools in the UK and the USA to track attendance, library book issue and cashless lunch purchases. Biometric scanning units are used throughout many workplaces in Australia to track pay and attendance of staff, secure door access within workplaces and secure electronic devices such as laptops.

Finger scanning in schools allows for accurate tracking and monitoring of attendance in and out of school gates as well as study periods. The primary focus is fulfilling the schools duty of care and enhancing student safety by increasing the accuracy of attendance data.

Fingerprinting vs Finger-scanning

These two technologies are often confused and are completely different.

Fingerprinting is an image recorded into a central computer system for matching and identification. This type of image capture is like a photograph and allows the image to be viewed and compared against others. This is not used by Millennium.

Millennium finger-scanning is the scanning of the layers of skin below the surface of the finger using radio waves. The finger’s ridges and arcs are turned into “data points,” which are converted into an encrypted numerical identifier assigned to each student. The measurements stored cannot be reverse engineered to create a finger print. The finger print image is not recorded and not saved.

The process is as follows: 

Step 1) Take the line and angle measurements.   

Step 2) Add the other attributes to form a completed template.

Step 3) Encrypt the template and store as a number.

Privacy

The office of the NSW Privacy Commissioner “raised no objections to the use of fingerprinting systems provided users were given a clear explanation of how they system operates and assurances that information will not be used for other purposes”.  Millennium Finger-scanning adheres to the Privacy code of the section 18BB(2) of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

For further information call Millennium 02 8004 3002