Taxpayers won't see any benefit of $26 million spent on a failed biometric project, a Senate inquiry was told on Thursday.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission dumped the project, which was set to contain a database of fingerprints and facial recognition technology, in June this year, after months of delays and budget blowouts.

The biometric program would have held a database of fingerprints and facial recognition software.

The commission's boss Michael Phelan said he had been "trying to keep the project alive" for months before pulling the plug in June.

"We had workshops in December with NEC, the main vendor, to work through the project and some of the issues we were having and then again in February there were more meetings to determine the way forward," Mr Phelan said