Facial recognition within school and public services: FOI release

Information requested

1. Whether there are any plans this year or in the future for any council areas to adopt facial recognition technology for use in schools; and
2. Whether there are any plans to use facial recognition technology within any public service.

Response

With regards to the first part of your request while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. However, you may wish to consider writing to the Directors of Education at individual local authorities, who may be able to advise you if there are any plans to do this at the local level.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested in part 1 of your request because the use of facial recognition technology in schools in Scotland is a matter for local authorities.

With regards to the second part of your request, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested, as it does not hold information about all public services . However, you may wish to contact the public services which you believe may be considering the use of facial recognition directly.

However the Scottish Government does use facial recognition technology within the digital identity service, as a route for identity verification. Within this service, the user follows a journey to take a photo of themselves and a photo of their official document, which are compared to see if they match. Furthermore, users who apply online for Social Security Scotland services or a National Entitlement Card can do so through the MyAccount service provided by Improvement Service. MyAccount users have the option to use Yoti to verify their identity as part of the services offered by MyAccount. Yoti uses facial recognition for identity verification.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested in part 2 of your request because it does not hold information in relation to all public services.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.