Scottish minister for finance and public service reform Tom McCabe are to be handed out the first professional certificates in smartcard development on 11 April 2005, ahead of a national roll out of the cards for elderly and disabled people. The certificates are awarded to council officials from 11 local authorities in Scotland who have worked on the IT and business development aspects of a smartcard scheme which is being extended to cover the whole country. A total of 1m elderly and disabled people will be the first to receive the smartcards, using them to pay for concessionary travel.
The cards will form the basis of a proposed national entitlement card for Scotland, to be used for accessing a range of public services such as paying for school meals, use in local libraries and leisure services.
As well as handing out the certificates to mark the completion of a smartcard training programme for local officials, McCabe is to use one of Aberdeen Council's Accord Cards to pay for a school meal during his visit to the city's Harlaw Academy.
Sid Bulloch, senior manager at the Scottish Executive's Improvement Service, told Government Computing News that a tendering process is soon to begin to expand the programme.
"The smartcard development will be the basis for a multi-application card and the aim is for local authorities to add a range of services which are likely to include library and leisure services," he said.
"The (Executive's) Transport Department has been working on plans for an infrastructure and there will be an (EU tendering) procedure for a roll out over the next nine months. We've done the trials and pilots and we're now looking to pull everything together into an entitlement project."
Quelle: KableNET, 11.04.2005
