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.