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Since August 2024 eu-LISA, through its R&I team, contributes to the maintenance of the OFIQ project.
The project was launched in 2020 under the umbrella of the ISO SC 37 (ISO Sub-Committee for the standardisation of biometric technology), and is currently led and developed by the German BSI.
OFIQ (“Open-Source Face Image Quality metric”) is an open-source software that is the reference face quality assessment tool of standard “ISO/IEC 29794-5:2025 on Biometric Sample Quality – Face Image Data”.
The tool also follows the requirements set in the Commission’s implementing decision (EU) 2019/329 for the Entry/Exit System, which requires that the quality of facial images comply with the standard “ISO/IEC 19794-5:2011 frontal image type” (standard for biometric interchange formats – face image data).
From the launching of the OFIQ project, eu-LISA has been actively involved in the design of the tool and, since 2024, plays a role in supporting its long-term maintenance.
Software tools such as OFIQ play a major role in the overall operation of the Large-Scale IT Systems managed by eu-LISA, from the time of acquisition of the data, to the moment in which this data is used for recognition purposes.
Furthermore, quality measures like OFIQ are valuable assets as self-auditing tools, in order to check that the overall quality of large datasets comply with the expected standards, or to detect if any specific contributor to a dataset is providing data of deficient quality.
Quality measures are also one of the key components that allow for the interoperability of the Core Business Systems managed by the Agency.
