Seminole ACCESS: A Multi-Function Campus Card System for the Information Age |-------------------------------------| | Paper presented at CAUSE92 | | December 1-4, 1992, Dallas, Texas | |-------------------------------------| SEMINOLE ACCESS: A MULTI-FUNCTION CAMPUS CARD SYSTEM FOR THE INFORMATION AGE Thomas G. James, Director, Administrative Information Systems Bill R. Norwood, Director, Seminole ACCESS Center Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida ABSTRACT The Seminole ACCESS card recently replaced the traditional photo-ID card for all faculty, staff and students. During the summer and first few weeks of the Fall term, over 30,000 cards were issued. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics, functions, and benefits of the Seminole ACCESS card system, with an emphasis on information processing requirements and opportunities. Topics such as system interfaces, cooperative processing, status verification, market research and digitized images will be addressed. Seminole ACCESS: A Multi-Function Campus Card System for the Information Age INTRODUCTION In the Fall of 1992 Seminole ACCESS cards officially replaced the traditional photo-ID card for all faculty, staff and students. During the summer and first few weeks of the Fall term, over 30,000 cards were issued. The Seminole ACCESS card provides the functionality of a traditional photo-id card, however, by adding a standard American Banking Association (ABA) magnetic stripe the potential uses of the card have increased substantially. Because FSU chose to take advantage of the banking industry's card processing systems and networks, the implications for information processing are considerable. The typical campus card contains a photograph, affixed to a laminated card of some type, and a proprietary magnetic stripe for processing debit transactions at campus locations. With Seminole ACCESS, debit purchases can be made both on and off campus at over 300 locations. Moreover, the banking ATM network is available throughout Florida for students while traveling or on summer vacation. However, the ability to make purchases at off-campus merchants or withdraw funds from an ATM is only a part of the Seminole ACCESS story. The breadth of service offerings on campus and the card's ability to link the holder with administrative and academic information systems is the other part of the story. The theme of this year's CAUSE conference, Grasping the Momentum of the Information Age, could not be more appropriate. Networks, open systems, imaging, multi-media, CASE and numerous other technologies are forcing us to change. Yet, some technologies, which have been around for years, still have considerable untapped potential. Such is the case for magnetic stripe technology. Much has been said and written about smart cards, but the cost of this technology has not yet dropped to the point where it is practical. Furthermore, the installed base of magnetic stripe technology is such that it will be years before the card industry implements smart card technology. Magnetic stripe cards, though criticized for their limited capacity, lack of interchange at the track 2 level, and the security problems associated with their passivity, nevertheless have some major benefits, such as cost, unamortized investments in magnetic stripe technology, and effectiveness. At FSU we believe there is a significant role yet to be played by magnetic stripe technology in the information age. Further, we believe that when the time is right for the introduction of smart card applications, there will not be a better place for implementation than a university campus. Thus, while we are pushing magnetic stripe technology to its limits, we are positioning FSU to be the Future Smart card University. But smart cards are another topic. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the Seminole ACCESS card for information processing at FSU. The point has been made that the value of the card is that it contains an industry standard magnetic stripe. What makes this stripe so useful, however, is that an ABA ISO account number has been encoded onto the stripe. This 16-digit number is the key to off-campus, real-time, financial transaction processing, and is fast becoming the common key for accessing administrative data, as well as a variety of on-campus services. SYSTEM INTERFACES While a major benefit of the Seminole ACCESS card is that the debittransaction processing component is a contracted service, in-house administrative computing staff had to build several interfaces to local systems. One of the first information processing issues facing FSU involved providing pertinent faculty, staff and student data to the distributed computing systems that encode data on the Seminole ACCESS card. As a part of that process it was also necessary to develop a way to interface our host databases, which use the social security number as a key, with the Seminole ACCESS card which contains the debit account number. In developing the file to drive the card generation process it became clear that, if it was designed properly, it could also function as a crosswalk between account number and the social security number. Our first notion that this file would contain little more than name, SSN, and account number was shortsighted. This single file, which moves in a cycle from the mainframe, to the card generation process, and back to the mainframe again, also gives us the ability, via a table lookup function, to access administrative applications knowing either the SSN or the account number. Because the use of student ID cards are so commonplace, almost all administrative systems must interface with this file. The Seminole ACCESS file, or crossover file as it has come to be known, is originally constructed by combining data from a personnel/payroll database and a student database. After downloading to the microcomputer used to produce cards, it is updated with additional information related to the card holder. In the interim, the host files may have changed, so the crossover file must be uploaded to the host and refreshed. This admittedly cumbersome refresh cycle must be streamlined in the future. Ideally, this batch process will be replaced with an online, real-time process. Our limited experience with cooperative processing applications is clearly evident at this stage of the project. Besides building the crossover file an interface had to be built for our online cashiering system to handle receipt of funds for deposit into Seminole ACCESS accounts. The cashiering system was modified to output these deposits to a file for transmission to the charge card center. A third system interface involved adding the ACCESS address to our Centralized Address database. Some time ago we began removing redundant student address information from each of our on-line systems and centralizing this data in a single file that all on-line systems access. We decided to treat the ACCESS address as another possible address for a student and modified our Centralized Address database accordingly. THE INFORMATION EXPLOSION Having issued 30,000+ Seminole ACCESS cards allows us to process information in ways that were not possible before. This has resulted in a veritable explosion of information. When the former photo-ID card was being used, not much thought was given to the various categories of people on campus and who was eligible for which service. Basically, there were four types of people, fulltime students, part-time students, non-paying students, and non-student, i.e., faculty or staff. Now that we have the ability to swipe a card and return information from a data base, the University can more specifically address the question of who is eligible for a particular service. In today's reality of shrinking budgets and increasing costs for services, it is important that we understand who is entitled to use services. After studying this situation over 30 different categories of card- holders have been identified (see table 1). In determining how to effectively control access to services, the need arose for the development of a comprehensive system to recognize the status of an individual and determine, on the basis of predetermined criteria, eligibility for a particular service. This implies more changes to administrative applications that are used in the process of service delivery. One such system is our Health Center system. Not all card holders are eligible to receive services at the University Health Center. Accordingly, the application supporting the Center will be modified so that with the swipe of a card service eligibility can be determined. Table 1. Sample Privileges by Category Matrix [MISSING CHART] At the present time we are deciding how best to implement an eligibility determination system based on a matrix of data similar to that shown in Table 1. A complicating factor is that not all service providers who want to make eligibility determinations use the University's host-based administrative applications. Our intent is to perform some eligibility processing on the microcomputer-based ACCESS security system that provides perimeter access support for a variety of buildings. However, what is required is a common application that exists in both the mainframe systems and in the distributed security system. We are evaluating four basic options: ---Write batch programs within each subsystem (Cashiering, Health Center, Registration, etc.) to read the appropriate files and set flags on the crossover file. This places responsibility for eligibility determination with each subsystem and means substantial programming and crossover file updating. It also means an overnight delay in getting eligibility data downloaded to the ACCESS system file. ---Change each subsystem to update the crossover file on-line/real-time. This approach has the advantage of more current data, but all files aren't updated on-line and there would still need to be batch updates in many cases. ---Develop a single batch update program to make all eligibility determinations and update the crossover file. This has the advantage of putting all eligibility determination logic in one program and reduces maintenance. ---Determine eligibility real-time from an examination of the appropriate files. This puts the burden on each subsystem and doesn't address issues in which no data exists to determine eligibility. However, this approach does reduce work load and simplifies maintenance. Regardless of the approach selected, one can see that a major issue we are working through is how to get mainframe systems and departmental systems to work in concert with one another. Using our current technology, this is cumbersome at best. At FSU we are convinced that if progress is to be made in cooperative processing, some new (to FSU) technology needs to be implemented. In any event, the point is that through the use of the Seminole ACCESS card, information that was never accessible in a real-time fashion, can be made an integral part of our information processing environment. We will, in time, overcome the obstacles we have encountered in making these various systems work with each other. INFORMATION AGE MARKET RESEARCH There is another dimension to the notion of defining carefully what categories of people the university serve and who is eligible for services. That is, determining who is actually using or paying for certain services. In order to know more about which categories of people use a facility, the debit account number must be matched against the crossover file containing the status of card holders and the services they are eligible to use. Potential use of this data for market research is considerable. Study after study can be done using data collected as people use facilities or buy drinks from vending machines. The Seminole ACCESS system can provide data on the number of women who use the recreation center, or how may freshmen attended a function sponsored by student government. Table 2 presents some data that was collected recently at our new recreation center by swiping Seminole ACCESS cards on a hand held computer. _______________________________________________________________________ Table 2. FSU Recreational Center Usage --Men Fresh Soph Junior Senior Grad Caucasian 75 89 142 189 56 Afro-Amer 15 34 52 47 5 Hispanic 2 4 1 0 0 --Women Caucasian 43 62 186 252 23 Afro-Amer 7 13 32 47 5 Hispanic 5 7 10 3 0 _______________________________________________________________________ Obtaining such information is important and it can now be provided without filling out forms. Issues related to data collection are, for the most part, eliminated, as students do not mind swiping their Seminole ACCESS card through a hand-held reader. No doubt some of this data will be very valuable to vendors who sell products and services to members of the University community. There is an entire body of market research data waiting to be tapped through the use of the Seminole ACCESS card. Financial Processing Students, faculty and staff use the Seminole ACCESS card to purchase everything from wash cycles in dormitory laundry machines to buying groceries at a PUBLIX supermarket while on vacation in Miami. Each transaction creates information that was not available previously. For example, when matched with University data files to extract impersonal, demographic data, extensive market research can by done on buying habits. Digitized Images FSU is using a system to produce ACCESS cards that captures and stores a digitized image of the cardholder. This feature opens new information processing opportunities that extend beyond the ACCESS card. A disadvantage of working with digitized images is the amount of storage required and the bandwidth required to move such images across a network. An uncompressed digitized photograph for an ID card would require between 60,000 and 80,000 bytes of storage. New techniques, however, are available to reduce this storage requirement to about 3,000 bytes per image. FSU now has a digitized image of every person issued a Seminole ACCESS card, and is planning to use this data in a variety of ways. Some of the possibilities include: --distributing the image file to individual departments to be used in local systems such as Campus Security. --supplementing the identification procedure at the University's standardized testing center to include visual verification by an operator at a PC. --adding a student's photo to class rosters distributed to faculty. Self-Inquiry Providing distributed access to administrative data via specialized terminal kiosks is a common practice on many college campuses. FSU has been using "self-inquiry" terminals for several years to provide students with information on their class schedule and fees owed. As FSU expands use of this system, by adding new functions, such as printing transcripts, and by using more advanced ATM-like terminals, provision will be made for making the ACCESS card the activation mechanism of choice. CONCLUSION Seminole ACCESS is a practical system that provides a single-card for use in multiple ways both on an off the college campus. It is seen as a key that unlocks the services of many varied, independently functioning applications of both a financial and administrative nature. The ability to pull information collected from all of these types of applications and begin to analyze the data to determine future needs and uses is a major benefit of the Seminole ACCESS architecture. The data collected today can be used to support the planning of future services for our students, faculty and staff. The information age demands information. The Seminole ACCESS system provides a new way to transform data into information, and at FSU we are very much aware of the momentum generated by that process. The goal is to grasp that momentum and be carried into to a more productive and prosperous future.