ISO/IEC 29794-1:2016, for any or all biometric sample types as necessary, establishes the following:

- terms and definitions that are useful in the specification and use of quality metrics;

- purpose and interpretation of biometric quality scores;

- encoding of quality data fields in biometric data interchange formats;

- methods for developing biometric sample datasets for the purpose of quality score normalisation;

- format for exchange of quality algorithm results;

- methods for aggregation of quality scores.

The following are outside the scope of ISO/IEC 29794-1:2016:

- specification of minimum requirements for sample, module, or system quality scores;

- performance assessment of quality algorithms;

- standardization of quality algorithms.