Facial recognition system to track attendance in Parliament: report
SINGAPORE — Wondering how often your Member of Parliament (MP) attends or is absent from sittings of the House? Their attendance will soon be tracked with a facial recognition system.
Citing tender documents on government procurement portal GeBiz, The Straits Times reported that the Parliament Secretariat, which oversees proceedings in the House, will be implementing the system to replace manual tracking.
With the new technology, Parliament can determine how many, and which, MPs are present during any sitting in real time.
According to the tender documents, the system will improve efficiency and enable Parliament to become a digitalised workplace. Users can conduct free online searches on the attendance for any sittings.
"During any sitting day, an MP will not be required to attend throughout, as not all issues will concern him/her. An MP may also 'come and go' several times during a sitting and there are also designated break times during sittings. As such, attendance needs to be tracked throughout the entire sitting and not just at the beginning or end of sitting day," said the documents.
The system must be able to generate reports on the number of MPs present and absent and attendance records, such as when and how many times an MP was absent in a given time period.
The tender includes the installation of around six "inconspicuous" cameras in Parliament for facial recognition capture.
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