The M1 Technical Committee on Biometrics was established by the Executive Board of INCITS in November 2001 to ensure a high priority, focused, and comprehensive approach in the United States for the rapid development and approval of formal national and international generic biometric standards. The M1 program includes biometric standards for data interchange formats, common file formats, application program interfaces, profiles, and performance testing and reporting. The goal of M1's work is to accelerate the deployment of significantly better, standards-based security solutions for purposes, such as, homeland defense and the prevention of identity theft as well as other government and commercial applications based on biometric personal authentication.