New Haven, Connecticut, is replacing fingerprint-based employee time clocks with facial recognition at 11 municipal workplaces. The change will affect roughly 340 city workers in departments that already use biometric clocks to record the start and end of shifts.
The city plans to replace older UKG Kronos 4500 units with UKG 9000 InTouch TouchFree ID clocks by the end of September. The existing fingerprint equipment is no longer supported by its manufacturer, according to city Chief Technology Officer Michael Simeone. The new devices are timekeeping terminals, rather than cameras installed to scan people passing through public spaces.
Simeone said the clocks activate when an employee steps up to sign in. He said they do not record video, track movement or scan members of the public. The city describes the stored biometric reference as an encrypted numerical representation of a face, not a retained photo. The original image is deleted after enrollment, and the reference is kept in the city’s private UKG cloud environment, according to Simeone.
Workers at the affected locations will not have an option to continue using a non-biometric clock. The locations include public works and parks facilities, the assessor’s office, a 911 call center and the IT department. City officials say they are replacing one biometric attendance method with another within departments already using electronic timekeeping.
City IT Director Chet Sawicki said the original move from manual records to electronic clocks reduced weekly payroll processing from hours to under 15 minutes. The clocks feed attendance records into the payroll system, avoiding manual re-entry. The planned face-recognition devices will continue that timekeeping role while replacing unsupported fingerprint readers.
Biometric attendance systems are used by employers in other settings. Kuwait’s aviation authority moved from fingerprint to facial-recognition attendance, and vendors have offered face-based attendance tools for retail workplaces. New Haven’s deployment differs from public-facing police facial recognition: it is limited to employee clock-in at specific city sites.
The change is scheduled for completion as September ends. City officials say the new terminals will preserve the existing electronic payroll workflow while shifting the biometric credential from a fingerprint to a facial template.
Sources: New Haven Independent
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
