The launch was attended by industry experts and representatives from governments around the region including Australia, New Zealand Papua New Guinea, Peru, Thailand and Viet Nam.
ePassports, a revolutionary improvement in passport technology to replace the previous common passport design that has been in existence for centuries, was formally adopted as the standard by a League of Nations conference in 1920. The only other significant improvement before the introduction of ePassports was the agreement by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the adoption of machine readable passports in 1981.
Australia, as a member of the APEC Business Mobility Group, has led this APEC project to develop a web based guide to introducing ePassports. Australia began issuing ePassports to its own citizens in 2005. These ePassports contain an electronic version of the bearer's photo and biodata, thus making the Australian ePassport more secure from fraudulent alteration.
The completion and release of the guide is one of the achievements of APEC 2007 hosted by Australia that reaches its climax with the APEC Leaders' Meeting in Sydney next week.
For additional information contact:
Christopher Hawkins on +61 (0)433 810 844 or E-mail: ch@apec.org
Anita Douglas on +65 9172 6427 or E-mail: ad@apec.org
