Cost of biometric readers
Spyblog notes that in the Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Immigration, Asylym and Nationality Bill, published earlier this week, the estimated cost of installing iris scan enabled passport readers is around £21,000 per reader. In the Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Identity Cards Bill, the cost of readers is estimated at £250 – 750.
Perhaps we are not comparing like with like here, but surely similar with similar. The cost difference is rather huge…
June 24th, 2005 at 21:36
In the interests of accurate reporting and not over-egging it, the estimate of each iris reader reported by Spyblog is £3k-£5k plus a PC. The £21k is for the fixed cost of network cabling at each site. So for N readers at a site, the total cost is £21k + £3k.N, or a minimum of £24k for each site.
Still a *wee* bit more than the reported £250-£750, though.