Mr. Mercer has thirty years of experience in the US Federal government, with experience in document security features and materials for passports and visas. He has advised several nations on passport tender evaluations and issuance procedures, the Department of Homeland Security on the revised Single Journey Return Letter, the Coalition Provisional Authority on the Iraqi Travel Document, and the Homeland Security Institute Forensic Laboratory on criminal prosecutions. His skills in management and writing and his in-depth knowledge of current and developing document security technologies are known worldwide.

 

Mr. Mercer holds and have held several positions as Chairman of the biennial Optical Document Security Conference, Advisory Board positions to the Keesing Journal of Documents and Identity, and Reconnaissance International´s ID and Security Document News and prior working to the private sector Mr. Mercer served for several years as Projects Officer for the US Department of State, where he was responsible for security features of US Passports, Visas and International Travel Document Standards.

 

In this capacity, he successfully led the Document Design Team for the 2005 US “American Icon” Passport, which incorporated electronic chips and biometrics in the document.

 

He also led design teams for the US Lincoln Visa foil and US photo-digital passport. The latter led to a reduction for document fraud from 10 per day to less than once per month. While at the US Department of State, Mr. Mercer served as US Advisor to eight International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Technical Advisory Group on Machine Readable Travel Documents (TAG-MRTD) plenary meetings, and he chaired the ICAO Document Content & Format Working Group (DCFWG) for seven years.