French e-passport: 1 millionth unit produced

The e-passport personalisation solution supplied by Thales has enabled the Imprimerie Nationale to manage the introduction and progressive scale-up of e-passport production.

The Imprimerie Nationale Française (French government printing office) has produced the 1 millionth French electronic passport. Launched in April 2006, French e-passports are now being produced at the rate of about 10,000 per day. In the run-up to the summer holiday period, production peaked at almost 20,000 passports per day, meeting the huge demand from people travelling to the United States.

Part of the consortium led by the Imprimerie Nationale — which launched the e-passport just five weeks after the contract was awarded — Thales supplied the graphic and electronic data personalisation system for the new electronic passport. Using this functional system, the Imprimerie Nationale was able to manage the transition and progressive scale-up of capacity during the first few months of production and meet the high levels of demand from April to June. "Thales's availability and responsive approach to this large-scale national project has been a significant factor in helping us to manage the peaks in production in the first few months,� said Loïc de la Cochetière, President of the Imprimerie Nationale.

With its integrated and modular architecture, the Thales system has the capacity to personalise up to 5 million electronic passports per year. Comprising modular "building blocks�, it is designed to adapt to different passport personalisation requirements with no effect on performance (see box below).

"Thales is delighted to have the opportunity to collaborate again on this prestigious programme with the Imprimerie Nationale,� said Philippe Dusautoir, Managing Director Identification Systems at Thales. "Our partnership with the Imprimerie goes back many years and includes the development of secure systems for the French national ID card and residence permits for non-French nationals, as well as ID documents for Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal and Lebanon.�

Technical information
The Thales secure graphic and electronic data personalisation system covers all phases of e-passport personalisation:

* Control of electronic chips as they enter the system
* Stock management
* Management of certain cryptographic keys
* Management of production batches with flow optimisation
* Control and processing of ICAO-standard ID photos
* Preparation of graphic and electronic data (excluding cryptographic data), personalisation of passports with graphic and electronic data and control of graphic and electronic data quality
* Interfaces with the Ministry's passport application management system, with the electronic signature platforms and with the passport application tracking website
* Workstation security
* Offline control stations

Thales is also providing associated services:

* On-site support for the installation, development and transition phases
* Applications maintenance