Over the past decade, progress in machine learning and sensors has fuelled the development of facial recognition technology (FRT) – a biometric technology capable of providing a score-based list of potential matches or verifying a person’s identity by comparing and analysing patterns based on that person’s facial features. This has led to its rapid adoption in various industries, including law enforcement, transportation, healthcare and banking.

The development of FRT presents considerable opportunities for socially beneficial uses, mostly through enhanced authentication and identification processes, but it also creates unique challenges.

To fully grasp these challenges and the trade-offs they may entail and to build appropriate governance processes, it is necessary to approach FRT deployment through specific use cases. Indeed, passing through an airport border control with face identification, using face‑based advertising in retail, or employing facial recognition solutions for law enforcement investigations involves very different benefits and risks.

To ensure the trustworthy and safe deployment of this technology across use cases, the World Economic Forum has spearheaded a global and multistakeholder policy initiative to design robust governance frameworks. The Forum launched the first workstream in April 2019, focusing on flow management applications1 – replacing tickets with facial recognition to access physical premises or public transport, such as train platforms or airports.

This workstream is now in the pilot stage with the release of a tested assessment questionnaire by Tokyo-Narita Airport, an audit framework and a certification scheme2 co-designed with AFNOR Certification (Association française de normalisation).