Smart Cards

The cardeurope and worldcard model

Sites of Interest

Bavaria On-Line ******************** GRASP Project ******************** Fasme

The role of Smartcards

The Partnership

Financial Services	Public Service Partners	) ) ) ) Card Europe ) and Worldcard ) ) ) )
Marketing Incentives Partner	Technology Partners

Access

Smartcards, if they are to be useful and therefore generally adopted, will have to address a key problem in the Information Society, that of user centric services. In addition, they will have to enable some enhanced contextualisation of service, beyond what is currently available through standard access. In a society where the only way to transact business will be electronic, a Smartcard must also overcome disenfranchisement of users, by providing:

· alternative routes of access

· through a range of publicly available terminal devices.

Utility

Most importantly, Smartcards will only be adopted if users are willing to carry them around and see them as having utility beyond their immediate application. Therefore, inter-operability is critical to the adoption of Smartcards. Smartcards therefore need not only to be inter-operable between services, but also enable mobility around Europe and the rest of the world,

Security

Security will be central to the wide adoption of Smartcard services, particularly where cash or information transactions are carried out. The current view is that biometrics will be at the heart of the security of the Smartcard, rather than passwords, numbers or other easily alterable information.

The Business Issues

Currently, much information about individuals is “stolen” by service providers at the point of use of a service; for example the use of loyalty cards in stores, or the presence of cookies on IT systems for net access. The Smartcard will therefore enable the user to define what information is released to the application or service provider. Confidence is crucial.

The user needs to be confident that:

· the personal information is secure, accurate and easily updateable by the user

· transmission of information does not over-write current data unless proved

· consent to data exchange lies with the user

The recipients of data must be sure that:

· data is verified and validated (a role for Local Authorities?)

· suppliers can be trusted to deliver a service

Re-Engineering Processes through Smart Cards

All electronic commerce initiatives imply changes in the way in which services are delivered. In the information world, the consumer is king, has access to a range of services and will demand convenience and value (and will be able to find services which compete). Content has to be:

· of the highest value and,

· the most useful information has to be at no more than three clicks from the starting point.

One example of the approach being described is that of ihavemoved.com, which is an on-line change of address service piloting a new approach for the UK government's me.gov initiative.

The Psychology of security

The wide adoption of Smartcard technologies will be accredited on a sense of security. Biometrics are seen as the likely ways in which that security can be achieved; however trust and therefore security is a matter of psychology, not of technology. Whilst digital signatures are currently secure, and it requires a huge capacity to break the signature, particularly if there is a combined public and private key approach, the publicity surrounding frequent breaches of security on the Web has left the public not trusting the service. Although therefore, face pattern recognition, fingerprints and iris recognition are possible ways forward, the issue will be whether individuals begin to trust the intermediaries who manage security, rather than whether the system itself is secure.

Without such a sense of security, the e-business world will simply exist in the form of person to person transactions, rather than involving third persons as part of the transactions. An interesting example of this can be found at www.tie.org.uk.

The Public Service in e commerce

Haydyn Howard ICL

Channels to citizen

eg: retail, local authority, post office

Access: Digital Interactive tv, Internet, Mobile, Walk-in, talk to

Sites

Referral and fulfillment service delivery, reconciliation = electronic mediation of services

Focus on life events – through support from all agencies – PP (partnerships?)

e – segments e-payments

e-learning _____ e-purse l

lifelong learning log e-government

e-community e- forms

e-business e-transaction

authority, identity

/

Smartcard as the personalisable portal

Therefore content and service can be personalised on the

fly