Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal June 2004 Volume 2 (3)

CILIPS conference: Smart cards

The smart city

Sid Bulloch explains how the Dundee Discovery Card became a leader in the field of public sector multi application smart cards - in Europe as well as the UK.

Dundee City Council’s commitment to improving public access to services by harnessing new technology is evident in a number of areas - it’s multi award-winning website, an innovative online transaction/workflow programme, initiatives combining CRM, a call centre and a multi-discipline customer service centre - but nowhere is it more evident than in the Dundee Discovery Card.

The Dundee Discovery Card has emerged as one of the forerunners in public sector multi application smart card development not just in Scotland but also in the UK and European arenas.

The challenges

Although there had been widespread interest for some time in the potential of smart cards it was considered that a Council-led citywide scheme was not feasible especially given the financial outlay as indicated at the time. So it wasn’t until 2001 that the Discovery Card project evolved from a proposal for the introduction of two transport related, card-based schemes and a realisation that there was a roll-out model which would contain costs through partnership, migrating existing card based system, offsetting future costs for proposed magnetic strip based systems, and seeking external funding.

Dundee had as its main objectives:

• Establishing a smartcard, which would compliment the objectives and targets contained in the Council’s Plan. Specifically, the smart card project was intended to go some way toward addressing the performance indicators relating to customer focused objectives and efficiency savings.
• Introduce core applications on the card especially those covering services to the young, elderly and disabled. These applications were identified as:
  • School services such as cashless catering / vending, registration, controlled access to areas / facilities and school transport.
  • Dual branding with the Young Scot /Euro < 26 dialogue youth and youth discount scheme.
  • Elderly and disabled free local bus travel.
  • Migration of the bar code based library membership card to the smart card.
  • A disabled taxi travel scheme.
  • Leisure membership.
• Facilitate the formation of a local smart card partnership aimed at developing public and private sector services that would be available from a single card scheme.
• Attract Scottish Executive funding.
• Establish Dundee City Council and the smartcard project in a position where it could participate in and influence developments in Scotland, the UK and beyond.
• Ensure the sustainability of the card scheme both in terms of Council commitment and as part of the regional partnership and Scottish programme.

The project is underpinned by a commitment to the citizens’ account concept and recognises the potential of the card to join up legacy systems and facilitate authentication for citizen access to information. As an integral part of the single citizen view, the project has now submitted a proposal to the Scottish Executive which would see the card application and authentication process being used as a vehicle for determining entitlement to services including a “once only” approach to concession/benefit applications.

The Council’s results

In October 2002 - after a learning curve that no amount of investigation or networking had prepared the team for - the first Discovery Cards appeared in Dundee. The cards are encoded to include all the relevant core Council applications and the first issue was targeted at school services such as cashless catering, vending machines and school library use. The cards are co-branded with the successful Young Scot scheme thus giving the pupil card holders access to the full range of services and high street discounts associated with the Dialogue Youth and Euro<26 schemes.

The introduction of the Dundee Discovery Card has been extremely successful. The schoolchildren in particular are open to using new technologies and it makes interaction with some of the services the school offers fun and much more straightforward. The child’s details and any benefit entitlement only has to be recorded and logged once and then as new applications, such as a leisure pass or library membership are required they can be downloaded onto the card. Offering joined up services is a huge consideration for Councils as we strive towards the e-Government targets - this is one proven way of doing it.

The core applications are now being rolled out and the card-carrying population is currently over 30,000. The introduction of public library and leisure management systems last year and the rollout to all of the city’s secondary schools has meant a steady increase in card numbers and plans are in place to release new applications and increase the cardholder population over the coming 18 months to two years. Dundee has an initial target of 70,000 cards (just under half the city’s population) by early 2005.

Focus groups and surveys have shown that citizen support for the scheme and its development is high. 66% of those surveyed were either interested (36%) or very interested (30%) in having a card. When asked to what extent they supported the Council’s activities in leading such activities only a small core of respondents noted their objection (7%).

There is clearly a fit between citizens’ perception of the City as relatively ‘go ahead’ and technologically advanced, and a local smartcard scheme. There is also clear evidence that the citizens’ perceived benefits can be directly linked to those policy benefits and objectives sought by the Council. But it is crucial to the development of this project that we continue to take heed of these surveys and also listen to the Council’s own internal reference group in order to get the user requirements right. There is no doubt that success depends on the service being user-centric and simple to use, but at the same time, it is also important that we consider the wider needs of the other stakeholders in the scheme.

Local partnership

Realising that the model for a sustainable scheme would require applications and services outside the Council’s domain, the project team sought the support of a number of organisations throughout the region and in 2002 the local partnership was formed. The original partnership consisted of two local authorities, two universities and the local FE College, the Chamber of Commerce, Travel Dundee and the local Health Board. There have been many expressions of interest and a number of other organisations are expected to join shortly.

The partnership has as it’s objective the creation of a sustainable, citizen centric, multi-application, multi-issuer scheme that will benefit everyone in the local area whether a resident or visitor for reasons of employment, education, business or tourism.

As a first step to delivering this multi-issuer model the Council and Abertay University have embarked on a project aimed at introducing a compatible smartcard for use within the university and through the introduction of various processes and infrastructure, allow a card issued to a secondary school pupil to gain them access to some university facilities. The project will seek to rationalize existing university card schemes with a final objective of introducing a smart multi-application matriculation card which will include automatic membership of the public libraries.

Within the Council itself, partnership agreements between departments are proving crucial to the success of the scheme - not just in terms of providing applications for the card scheme but also in providing the infrastructure required to underpin the scheme. So, for example, the ongoing cardholder registration, card issuance and re-issuance relies on the Council’s Customer Services team, just as the schools perform the same tasks for their own pupils. Prime amongst these agreements is that between the card scheme and the Communities Department. The co-operation of library staff has been absolutely crucial to the success of the scheme. When we needed to do a bulk take-on to provide cards for senior citizens, it was the libraries that supplied the front-line service giving out information about the scheme, processing the applications, checking that the right proof of entitlement was produced and generally providing the convenient location and right atmosphere for the senior citizens. Now, plans are well under way to actually use the libraries as ‘one stop shops’ where people can bring in the right documents, have their photograph taken and walk out with a smart card. In return, the smartcard scheme will promote library membership through the schools and include facilities and procedures to process library memberships at the Discovery Card office. In terms of achieving critical mass for the card and its brand, there is a very strong case for a one off exercise to transfer the existing bar code cards over to the smart card.

However, because of the multi-application nature of the card, a judgement call is required. In Dundee our initial target audience was the young (school services) and elderly (concessionary travel). As a result library memberships have so far been added to cards already issued under these programmes. In the near future however, applications for library services will generate a new card albeit that we also hope it will include other services in line with the ‘one stop shop’ approach.

The Scottish dimension

Dundee’s objectives of influencing national developments and attracting funding have proved well founded as they were central figures in putting together a consortium which has to date attracted almost £6 million of Scottish Executive funding. The consortium (S-CASC: Scottish Citizen Account Smartcard Consortium) is being chaired by Dundee and consists of 11 local authorities with an agenda that will deliver a multi application smart card scheme, integrated with the Citizen Account, for a range of services that join up government in a transparent way. The current round of Modernising Government Funding will see this consortium expand and the plan is for the three smartcard models within SCASC to converge around national applications over the next few years. This process has already begun with Dundee leading a smartcard transport project aimed at delivering interoperable smart bus ticketing throughout Scotland.

Within SCASC the majority of the authorities are following the Dundee model and as they begin to roll out their schemes they will no doubt be looking closely at the Dundee experience of harnessing the library network with a view to introducing similar processes themselves.

SmartCities Interest Group

As if all of this hasn’t kept us busy enough, Dundee has taken a leading role in establishing the SmartCities Interest Group (SIG) as a major European smart card forum. The SIG which is currently chaired by Dundee grew from the EU funded SmartCities project in Southampton and it currently has over 70 local authority members from 11 countries that are committed to the SmartCities model. The SIG provides a forum for evaluation and validation of smartcard projects and it will play a vital role in the development of European standards and principles through its EU sponsored workshop aimed at enabling interoperability between schemes from the local to trans-national levels.

Good value for all

Developing the scheme with its various partners is bringing about real service improvements. This is an excellent project to be involved in - not only is it bringing real benefit to the citizens who are using it but together we are helping to develop international standards that will ensure when other cities adopt this technology there will be openness and consistency. As a Dundonian myself, I’m particularly pleased that Dundee is taking this lead and that the citizens are supportive of it. Joined-up Government services are going to make the system more efficient and more accessible to the citizen and this project opens up the possibility of adding other local government services via one point of contact.

Sid Bulloch is Project Manager, the Dundee Discovery Card. This article is based on his presentation at the CILIPS Annual Conference, June 2004.

Information Scotland Vol. 2 (3) June 2004

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.