Further organisations to use smartcards after University success

Sunderland City Council has completed the first stage of a smartcard scheme intended to provide citizens with access to shared government services.

The council has rolled out the federated identity scheme using technology from ActivIdentity to 8,500 National Union of Student members at the University of Sunderland and now plans to make it available to other public and private organisations.

Students are using the smartcards to receive discount privileges and to authenticate themselves on university computer systems.

The council is now inviting other organisations to use the technology for their own identity management projects.

'The infrastructure is a prototype capability designed to support the government's drive toward shared services and since our definition of this embraces all sectors we are now promoting it to the public and private sector organisations throughout the North East of England to encourage their use of the system,' said Conn Crawford, strategic projects officer at the council.

Accountancy software firm Sage has also signed up to the scheme and is using it to authenticate staff at its headquarters in Newcastle.

The council is now encouraging other organisations to join the project.

'Using a federated identity management infrastructure allows third party payment and e-ticketing services to be accessed by organisations planning a facilities smartcard to control employee access,' said Crawford.