A new facial recognition system will be embedded within the New South Wales government’s licence and photocard register before the end of 2026, giving agencies better fraud detection capabilities.
Transport for NSW issued a tender last week that will see it replace the state’s existing NEC facial recognition system with an off-the-shelf solution offering both one-to-one and one-to-many photo matching.
The new solution is expected to “significantly decrease the risk of fraud against TfNSW”, compared with the NEC system that has been in place since 2018 and is now nearing end-of-life.
A TfNSW spokesperson told InnovationAus.com that the new system will support the long-standing ‘one driver, one licence’ policy held by transport agencies and prevent fraud in the issuing of licences and other ID documents.
“We issue a range of licence and identification documents to the NSW public. A key part of issuing these documents is ensuring the right person obtains them, supporting TfNSW’s objective of: ‘one driver, one licence’,” the spokesperson said.
“Every time a licence, identity document or permit is issued, TfNSW needs to ensure the identity of the customer on the document is valid and the customer does not have multiple identities.”
Much like the near end-of-life NEC system, the new system is expected to host customers’ photos in the NSW government’s GovDC data centre, and will have “direct dependencies” with other state and national biometrics projects.
Tender documents also show the system will be used to support agencies like NSW Police to identify a person of interest “when requesting evidence for prosecution”, although InnovationAus.com understands officers will not have direct access.
NSW Police has had its own facial recognition capability since 2012, but earlier this year deactivated one of its systems following reports that the vendor had misidentified West Africans almost seven times more often than Europeans.
It remains unclear whether the PhotoTrac system has been deactivated entirely, with NSW Police deferring answers to questions from Greens MP Abigail Boyd at Budget Estimates earlier this month.
“Do you know if Cognitec technology is still being used in some form in the PhotoTrac system?” Ms Boyd asked NSW Police deputy commissioner Peter Thurtell, who responded, “No, I’d have to take that on notice.”
NEC Australia has operated the facial recognition system used by TfNSW since it secured several four-year contracts worth a combined $11 million in 2018, just weeks after it was dumped from a $90 million federal government biometrics project.
According to the NSW government tendering website, one of those contracts – which has been extended several times and will expire in December 2026 – has since grown to $15.5 million.
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