Thorough testing improves interoperability

A chip-enabled e-passport is next generation technology. The successful production and implementation of e-passports around the world is a big challenge, particularly in view of the multitude of implementation alternatives and the complexities that each (document and document reader) implementation entails. All document and reader implementations need to be compatible. Test standards provide global guidelines, which, in turn, form a benchmark for interoperability. From an interoperability perspective, the conformity of e-passport documents and readers to ICAO and ISO standard is the bottom-line. The purpose of the test standards is to validate this conformity. This article provides a brief history of e-passport interoperability tests, reports on the Berlin test summit, and reviews the status of an ISO standard for e-passport testing. It also offers a glimpse of the future.