Mr Alex Skene

Email: mailto:[email address]

Our reference FOICR 9464/08

Date: 14 May 2008

Dear Mr Skene

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

Thank you for your letter of 14 April, in response to ours of 11 April concerning your information request on photograph standards. I understand from your letter that you would like to have further details in relation to your request and I am pleased to be able to disclose the information that you requested.

I was hoping you could give me full physical details for the template, including size measurements of the laminate graphic - i.e .provide the actual minimum/maximum head sizes & location of where eyes should be as this information is not provided in the photo advice leaflets provided to the general public or photographers. It might be easiest if you could email a scale CAD drawing / diagram or similar of the laminate section of the template.

The template that is supplied to the Post Office is designed to help them limit the number of rejections from the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) application process. It is a guide rather than an absolute definitive measurement criteria. This is because all people are unique and as such have different aspects to their overall head size and shape; some are more oblong, others round and some with square jaws. To ensure we do not discriminate in any way, rather than use a single measurement, we employ a set of parameters on the template supplied to the Post Office.

The template is an operational tool designed to assist the Post Office and as such is reviewed from time to time. It is our intention to make this template available on our website for applicants and the industry to download and print should they wish. Therefore I expect that you will be able to obtain the details you require in this way.

IPS does provide a great deal of information to the public and professional photographic industry to assist applicants in obtaining and providing compliant photographs. Head size and eye location parameters are clearly illustrated in the downloadable material (which is also supplied within our application packs).

You state in the answer for 3(c) that the only physical measurements you make are the size of photograph itself and the number of pixels between the eyes. However you also state in 3(a) that the computer system looks "for various reference points from the face and requires a certain number of pixels between these points to create the biometric image" - there must be some measurements here? Please could you therefore provide a full technical specification for these biometric measurements, including number of pixels counted, what the points of references are, how the computer system detects them, as well as the resolution the photo is scanned in at.

The applicant's photo is assessed both manually and electronically to ensure it meets the published IPS standards and adheres to the international standard required for passports. These standards are available as a published International Standard - ISO/IEC 19794-5 which can be purchased from the British Standards Institute at

(http://www.bsigroup.com/).

If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request by submitting your complaint to the below address quoting reference FOICR 9464/08.

Information Rights Team
Information and Record Management Service
Home Office
4th Floor, Seacole Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Email: [email address]

During the independent review the department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. Should you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you will have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

In keeping with the spirit and effect of the Freedom of Information Act, all information is assumed to be releasable to the public unless exempt. The department therefore, will be simultaneously releasing to the public the information you requested together with any related information that will provide a key to its wider context.

I hope that you find this information of interest, and would like to assure you that you have been supplied with all relevant information that IPS holds.

Yours faithfully,

On behalf of the Identity and Passport Service

For advice on how and where to obtain a passport,

call the Passport Adviceline on 0870 521 0410

(24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

You can also email [email address]

or visit www.ips.gov.uk

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