Chasing the Access Card
Chasing the Access Card
December 15, 2006: The race is on. With a briefing on the upcoming Access Card delivered by the government this week, vendors are gearing up for their stake in the rollout of over 16.7 million cards.
Kerri Hartland, deputy secretary of the Office of the Access Card, told vendors at the briefing that “Australia’s reliance on magnetic strip technology and cardboard cards is out of date.” With issues of fraud, identity theft and time consuming repetitive data entry hindering Australia’s healthcare services, Hartland told vendors that Australia was ready for a multilayered security card.
The government has a serious task ahead, yet it is one that vendors are keen to get a hand on once the RFT is released in January next year. Over a two year period between 2008 and 2010, the Federal Government is aiming to register and issue 16.7 million cards for adult Australians. To help out, the Office of the Access Card is looking for contractors who can deliver on proven applications and technology and also demonstrate a successful track record.
So just how tough will the competition be for those chasing a piece of the project? Bruce Thompson, CEO for Keycorp believes there will be bids for the Access Card from all corners of the globe but given the tender criteria, only six to eight serious contenders.
Already Keycorp, an Australian company, has partaken in multiple projects overseas including the Hong Kong identity card and the rollout of EVM cards (the standardised chip card from Europay, MasterCard and Visa) across the globe. But as yet and excluding the Access Card project, the market has been somewhat lacking for both public and private sector smartcard projects in Australia. While smartcard technology has become a way of life for many parts of Europe and Asia, especially in the financial sector, Australia appears sorely behind.
“In Australia, there has not really been a business case for the implementation of smartcards,” says Thompson. “The banks approach to fraud in Australia is detection rather though fraud prevention and smartcards are about fraud prevention.” While Australian banks are well on their way to becoming EMV compliant, Thompson says it has not been a pressing issue due the minimal impact of fraud in Australia compared to other parts of the world.
Thompson believes that the controversy surrounding the Access Card project will die down once the community comes to recognise the benefits of smartcard technology. “Smartcards in Australia might be a new technology, but smartcards in other parts of the world are far from new,” he says. “This is normal technology around the world that is making cards secure.”
Meanwhile, RSA Security is also prepping up their expertise to tender for the Access Card project. Mark Pullen, Country Manager for ANZ says RSA is looking to participate in the infrastructure and development of the access card solution. Pullen believes the RSA Key Manager as developed in Brisbane and used worldwide could well provide for the experience needed. “This satisfies a couple of key criteria of the RFT process through the fostering of local industry development and for applications to be commercial off-the-shelf packages,” he says.