Border Kiosk Management - DBM Consulting Services

The desire for fast, secure, and reliable traveler processing at ports of entry has been at the forefront of most air and sea operators, as well as government agencies, tasked with securing their countries borders. Process automation was the only solution to keep up with an ever-growing and demanding travel population inundating airports around the world. Vancouver International Airport tackled that problem with the introduction of the world’s first Automated Border Control kiosk that required no pre-registration. This game-changing technology was limited in its scope for many years, and it wasn’t until the US government became involved in 2013 that a new industry was born overnight.

DBM Consulting began working with Vancouver International Airport (VIA) in 2013 and oversaw growing number of Automated Border kiosks operating within the US and Canadian governments Border Management Systems. These kiosks were only at a few airports in North America with just over 100 kiosks in service. Management of the kiosks themselves were limiting and cumbersome and created an unmanageable strain on existing airport operations at VIA, not to mention the long lead time and complicated implementation steps necessary for other airports to adopt the new technology.

Once an initial assessment was completed, business objectives were collected and aligned with a program roadmap. A resource re-alignment was implemented to support the existing program and plan for future expansion better. Significant infrastructure and system architecture changes were implemented that not only drastically improved implementation customer lead times and support capabilities but removed majority of the technical barriers that new airports would have encountered with other vendors in the market. Additionally, the modern architecture and infrastructure provided the most secure and resilient system amongst all the vendors and even surpassed the reliability the government agencies could offer at that time.

The system improvements, resource, and team re-alignment and overall program changes and advancements catapulted VIA into the number one vendor in North America for Automated Border Control kiosks and allowed them to expand into other markets and countries. By 2019, VIA had kiosk programs integrated and operating in Canada, the United States, Barbados, and Cyprus in over 40 different airports and seaports around the world with close to 1,500 kiosks in operations. These kiosks and systems have processed over a quarter-billion people by 2019. They are an integral part of every airport’s operational service infrastructure, ensuring travelers can get through the immigration and customs process quickly and securely.

The future need for Automated Border Kiosks will continue for quite some time. As traveler demographics and needs change over time, so to will the technology need to adapt to those needs. The technical maturity level of border agencies will play a large part in driving that change; the pressure will be on them to ensure they are adequately resourced to handle that change.