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The smart card slot!

Sara EyreHead of IT Customer Services

s.j.eyre@bradford.ac.uk

Or how to produce an attendance monitoring system using the access control system

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Why do you need attendance monitoring

• Need to monitor physical presence of undergraduates at lectures for borders agency

• Academic engagement – identify students with potential to drop out

• Ensure attendance and engagement before bursaries paid

• For professional body approval – Health, Social Work, Life Sciences courses– Lots of paper based manual systems in operation at present

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History of smart cards at Bradford

• Smart cards with MiFare 1K chip for photocopying and Library access introduced for students in Summer 2002– Bar code for Library

management system

• Also introduced cards for staff for Library access– Amazing how few had them

when we upgraded!

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Access control system at Bradford

• Progeny (MiFare based) and Integra (mag stripe based) systems in use on separate cards– Both highly labour intensive to support as

each lock has to be visited and updated

• Salto project started summer 2005– originally to protect new AV equipment in

teaching rooms – so staff only

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Salto proved popular

• Soon students needed access to major buildings• Salto database updated daily from student record and HR

systems using Calopus• All student cards programmed with Salto capability from

Summer 2007 as part of enrolment process

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Salto in April 2009

• On line locks – 113– Now on entrance to most

buildings– Many corridors– Car park barriers linked to

Salto system summer 2008

• Off line locks – 361– On centrally timetabled

teaching rooms– On equipment cupboards in

teaching rooms– Staff only areas

• Card plus PIN locks installed for secure areas

• 100+ awaiting installation

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Key advantages of Salto

• Online locks interrogate central database in real time for appropriate access rights

• Online locks transfer audit trail to central database• Black list of users transferred from online lock to every

card

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Key advantages - off line locks

• Receive updated black list from users’ cards • Store audit trail of cards used and write it back to each

card– transferred to central database via next use of an on line lock

• An off line lock can be portable so can be passed round classroom

Choose the SVN Virtual network option from Salto web site for a better explanation! www.saltosystems.com

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So how does this help attendance monitoring?

• Salto database contains user id, date, time and lock id• Plan to extract data into the attendance field of the

student record system, SITS• SITS will trigger text message and emails for non-

attendance to student and, later, course administrators and UKBA administrator

• Attendance data can be extracted by anyone with SITS access

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Assumptions made at Bradford

• That we can match a portable card reader to a particular lecture or lab session

• We do not want to issue new cards to all students• If one student asks another one to ‘swipe them in’ they

are still engaged with the University• Accessing the Library or other building entry point does

not satisfy the UKBA• Departments will extract their own class attendance data

– if any professional body requires this information

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The issues!

• Do you want to use bio-metrics to ensure Person and not Card is being monitored? – Has anyone done this yet in HE? Costs?

• How to stop one person swiping lots of cards?– Who verifies the person and card match?

• How do you prevent queues down corridors at the start of lectures if you use door readers?– How do you know student has then attended the lecture? – Bradford aim to use portable readers in large classes

• What constitutes a ‘Contact point’?

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Smart card futures at Bradford

• Mifare 4K plus JCOP for use with Sun Rays– 22,000 just ordered as part of JISC project ITS 4 SEA– Still mag stripe for access control in old halls– Still bar code for Library self- issue and self-return

• Printing and copying using Pharos – purse NOT on card• Sport Centre control – purse NOT on card • Possible cashless vending - ?????• Legacy access control systems (100+) nearly redundant

– but it has taken over 4 years and over £20,000

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The end

• Subscribe to smartcards@jiscmail.ac.uk

• Join the Higher Education Smart Card Association www.hesca.com

• www.saltosystems.com• ITS 4 SEA – Integrating Thin client and Smart cards For Secure E-

Assessment http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/institutionalinnovation/its4sea.aspx

Any questions?