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Central Government, Government Security, Local Government, Policy, Technology

Crossing Hong Kong-Macau border made easy

By Jianggan Li | 30 November 2009

Hong Kong residents will soon be able to enter Macau through a new e-channel system using their Hong Kong ID cards while those living in Macau will have the same privilege, according to a joint agreement by the two governments.

Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah and Macau’s Secretary for Administration and Justice Florinda da Rosa Silva Chan signed the memorandum to speed up immigration clearance for residents of Hong Kong and Macau.

Under the agreement, from December 10 onwards, the immigration clearance time will be cut from the present one minute to less than two seconds for those who enrol in the scheme.

Both HK and Macau have adopted smart card technology for their ID cards, with cardholders’ fingerprint templates stored inside the chips on the cards. When an ID card holder presents for clearance at the electronic channel, his or her personal data and fingerprint template will be retrieved from the chip for verification of identity.

Helen Chan Wing-mui, Assistant Director of Immigration (Information Systems), told FutureGov that the biggest challenge during the implementation was interoperability.

“The auto-gate clearance services provided in Hong Kong and Macau are leveraged on their own ID card platforms,” Chan explained. “However, Hong Kong and Macao have used different algorithms to generate fingerprint templates in their ID cards.”

Hence, “interoperability” is the major technical challenge for the ID cards to be used in the other side’s automatic clearance gates.

In addition, Hong Kong’s privacy legislation prevents authorities from sending personal data to another party without consent from affected individuals. Self-enrollment kiosks were therefore developed to tackle the issue. Hong Kong residents enrol their fingerprints with the algorithm used by Macau authorities through the kiosks.

Self-enrolment kiosks are located at the two ferry terminals where most Macao-bound passenger ships depart.

The application takes a maximum processing time of five working days, after which the residents will be able to use the Macau Automated Passenger Clearance System with their own identity cards.

A dedicated data line is used to transfer the enrolled fingerprint templates to Macau under encryption. Chan explained that this was to make sure that security and privacy of citizen data are effectively protected.

Hong Kong residents are also able to directly enrol themselves with Macau Immigration and the same arrangements will also be applied to Macau citizens who wish to use Hong Kong automatic clearance gates.

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