- SUPPORT
- FEASIBILITY
- SCHEME DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
- TRAINING
- CARD SUPPLY AND PERSONALISATION
- MANAGED SERVICES
Services
SUPPORT
The SmartCitizen team has provided strategic, project management and technical consulting on many projects over the years. We have worked with partners and customers such as ARM, BTG, Cornwall County Council, IRIS Technologies, ITSO and the Malaysian Government. As a truly independent company, we can provide impartial advice on the whole spectrum of smart card scheme design, technology and procurement.
The SmartCitizen team has considerable experience of managing large and small card projects. Whenever possible we favour running low risk pilots because this provides an authority early experience and stakeholder feedback which can be used to modify rollout plans. In the rare case that a pilot provides exactly the results predicted, this knowledge improves the confidence of decision makers. If a pilot is designed around legacy systems and involves a small number of cards, and is well managed, costs and timescales can be relatively limited.
Our attention to new technology and industry standards allows us to add value in a wide range of smart card consulting projects. Working with a consulting team with many years of experience, and a growing list of partner solution providers we can save our customers time and money and provide the solutions that they need to make them competitive in a rapidly growing market.
FEASIBILITY
Before embarking on any new scheme, it is fundamentally important to establish a robust business case. SmartCitizen’s approach is to begin by carrying out a comprehensive card audit to establish what card schemes are already in operation, of whatever technology. This exercise soon identifies the existing stakeholders and provides an early indication of the starting card population. Because many of these schemes are likely to be rudimentary, accurately assessing the number of cards in regular use and the total cost of administering a particular scheme is more difficult. However SmartCitizen has established some rules of thumb which do give a reliable estimate. Interviewing existing stakeholders also provides a useful opportunity to elicit the drawbacks of a present scheme, any desirable improvements and some idea of the added value which could be delivered.
Card audit data provides essential input into the business case. In SmartCitizen’s experience, there is often a compelling financial business case just from combining existing schemes onto a smart platform. This will inevitably be improved when other cost and social benefits are added in. Once the overall feasibility of a scheme has been confirmed and an acceptable business case has been developed, a local authority is in a position to decide to invest resources to determine how best to move forward.
SmartCitizen has considerable experience of constructing business cases and undertaking feasibility studies.
SCHEME DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
The SmartCitizen team has a long and successful track record of developing applications for smart cards in national ID, financial, e-government, transport ticketing and other vertical markets. We have worked independently and in partnership with other smart card technology companies on many high profile projects.
We can assist clients across the whole smart card solution development lifecycle, including the planning, requirements capture, design, hardware selection, design, coding and testing.
We understand the issues our customers face, with the increasing pressures of time-to-market, cost, functionality and security. Whether you are planning an entirely new card program, or taking an existing operation to the next level, we have the experience and expertise to help bring your card solutions to market faster and at less cost.
Often, authorities planning to launch new card projects can benefit from the accumulated experience of other card schemes, and this is where a partner like SmartCitizen can deliver real value. The SmartCitizen team has direct operating experience of some of the UK’s most important schemes, and having developed much of the National Smart Card Project software is well placed to recommend which models are the most appropriate.
TRAINING
SmartCitizen can provide smartcard technical training to any level required by your organisation. Our experienced consultants have been commissioned by the ODPM to deliver smartcard workshops throughout the UK.
Our technical expertise stems from designing, implementing and supporting prestigious local government citizen card projects such as the Cornish Key scheme in Cornwall and Suffolk’s Mid-Suffolk Key. We also have experience of developing solutions for national passport and identity schemes, electronic purse and high security financial applications for bluechip card operators.
Our consulting expertise includes choice of chip technology, operating systems, application software functionality and standards compliance. We can advise on matters of testing and support during deployment, including card personalisation.
Our skills include:
- Development of the National SmartCard Project’s Starter Kit software, including card personalisation software and life cycle management products
- Design, implementation and support of live smartcard schemes
- In-depth understanding of smartcard specifications, chip technologies and architectures
- Development of multi-application and JavaCard operating systems
- Experience of contact and contactless smartcard protocols such as T=CL, JavaCard and MiFare
- Development of new smartcard applications, such as Special Needs and PKI.
SmartCitizen’s consultants have experience in providing training and guidance for both public and private sector personnel and would be delighted to discuss your requirements further with you.
CARD SUPPLY AND PERSONALISATION
Working with partners, SmartCitizen can offer comprehensive bureau services for personalising cards and can provide stand-alone systems for our customers to personalise their own cards. The requirement to securely handle large amounts of personal data is often overlooked in smartcard schemes but we have the experience, equipment and systems to help you meet this requirement with confidence.
We provide photo-ID cards for many clubs, companies, universities and transport authorities throughout the UK. Whether the cards are contact cards, contactless or just plain white plastic, we offer the data-entry, database management, de-duplicating, and end-to-end fulfilment services for ensuring each card gets printed with the correct photo, data, barcode or whatever is on the design. We offer card layout and design services and can advise on best practice to help you optimise your own designs. Each individual card is tracked through our bureau so we can advise, at any time, whether the data is received and validated, or whether any card printed, encoded, mounted, or posted.
We can use your existing database of information or can design data entry forms and manage their distribution and completion to and from your customers, validating data against your specific requirements. Where photographs are required, we can use your existing electronic data or can scan passport-type photographs for merging with the card data.
Often this data is highly confidential so our bureau operates in its own secure area and runs independent servers which are isolated from our main computer network. Only authorised personnel are allowed to enter this area when jobs are running and, in the most sensitive of cases, such as when we handle personal data of school children, only those personnel who have been positively vetted by the criminal records bureau are allowed to work on the job.
Cards are printed on our high-resolution dye-sublimation printers and the finished cards can be either sent in bulk or mounted onto personalised cover letters for despatch directly to the card-holders.
This system is used for long runs of cards such as during the annual intake of students each October to universities or for the launch of new regional transport or citizen card schemes. However, to maintain flexibility, our customers often want the ability to produce small numbers of cards themselves to cope with lost cards or new entrants. In this case, we can provide stand-alone photo-ID stations such as the Burall PersoniQ range, including camera, PC, printer, encoding station and blank card stock, specific to your needs.
MANAGED SERVICES
SmartCitizen is able to offer a complete range of managed services. Our managed services will help you achieve more, by improving the cost effectiveness of your current systems, reducing the management time spent on managing card schemes and providing objective advice to help you realise future plans.
We can provide a managed service with wider experience, skills and resources than most IT departments are able to achieve in the smartcard scheme area. Our clients benefit from our knowledge gained through managing a diverse range of card schemes for local authorities at different stages in their lifecycles. Our tools and processes have been honed by our people to enable clients to benefit from our cumulative experience.
