Smartcard, smart cities?
Smartcards are flexible, small and portable storage devices that carry secure personal data. Due to the security they offer and their flexibility of use, smartcards have expanded their usage over the last decade for a large number of applications. The average city inhabitant uses several cards in order to have access to services and facilities.However smartcard technology has the capacity to perform all the services one could need, from travel tickets, membership fees, to cash withdrawals. The SmartCities Project was designed and developed with the aim of incorporating and replacing all others cards that are currently used by the average person living in a city. Transportation cards, libraries cards, membership cards as well as cards for commercial purposes can be replaced regardless of their supplier, their technology or the platform they run on. The open architecture design and the Application Programming Interface used for the new card allow it to support all known smartcard standards and consequently addressed fears of being dependant on one provider that many officials expressed. Due to this cities can achieve card-level interoperability and freedom of supplier choice. The smartcard has already been used in the university of Southampton by 35,000 students and is expected to be used by more than 60,000 citizens by the end of next year. The pilot programme has proven highly successful and consequently, inter-city usage is being investigated as well as how smartcard technology could be used for e-government.
