CR80News Winter 2016

CARDS HELP CAMPUS DINING GO GREEN

BIOMETRICS: CONVENIENCE, SECURITY OR BOTH?

QUESTIONS EVERY CARD OFFICE DIRECTOR MUST ASK

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ID TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION WINTER 2016 - ISSUE 24

CARDS, CASH OR FREE?

THE FUTURE OF

PAYMENT

IN CAMPUS

LAUNDRY

Connect

cbord.com/community

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS 4 Editorial: The ID card’s role in campus change and evolution 6 ID Shorts News and posts from CR80News.com 10 The future of student ID cards in campus laundry Does the card still fit when retrofitting this age-old service 14 Campus laundry: A brief history of dirty laundry

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16 Going green, saving green Campus cards power reusable container systems in campus dining

THE FUTURE OF ID CARDS IN CAMPUS LAUNDRY

20 Future-proofing your campus card operation Strategic questions that every campus card director should be asking 24 Biometrics on campus: Convenience, security or both?

28 Card offices benefit from local, on-site service and integration 29 Beyond local service, local consulting 30 George Mason moves to smart ID card system Multi-tech door access readers enable phased transition to contactless

INDEX OF ADVERTISERS 32 Blackboard www.blackboard.com/transact/Top5saas

2

CBORD

www.cbord.com/community

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ColorID

www.ColorID.com

31 Entrust Datacard www.datacard.com/CR80

25 Heartland www.1card.com

GOING GREEN, SAVING GREEN

16

13 Gantner www.gantner.com

21 Identification Systems Group www.IdentificationSystemsGroup.com

23 MyPhoto www.studentidphoto.com

17 NACAS www.caspcert.org

27 NACCU www.naccu.org/2016

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SARGENT

www.personacampus.com

BIOMETRICS ON CAMPUS: CONVENIENCE, SECURITY OR BOTH?

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ABOUT

CR80News EXECUTIVE EDITOR & PUBLISHER Chris Corum, chris@AVISIAN.com EDITOR Zack Martin, zack@AVISIAN.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Hudson, andrew@AVISIAN.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Liset Cruz, Autumn Cafiero Giusti, Gina Jordan ART DIRECTOR Ryan Kline ADVERTISING SALES Chris Corum, chris@AVISIAN.com Sales Department, advertise@AVISIAN.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS CR80News is free to qualified professionals in the U.S. For those who do not qualify for a free subscription, the annual rate is US$39 ($59 outside the U.S.). Visit http://store.avisian.com for subscription information. No subscription agency is authorized to solicit or take orders for subscriptions. Postmaster: Send address changes to AVISIAN Inc., 315 E. Georgia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301.

ABOUT CR80News CR80News is published four times each year by AVISIAN Inc., 315 E. Georgia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301. Chris Corum, President and CEO. Circulation records are maintained at AVISIAN Inc., 315 E. Georgia Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301.

Copyright 2016 by AVISIAN Inc. All material contained herein is protected by copyright laws and owned by AVISIAN Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. The inclusion or exclusion of any does not mean that the publisher advocates or rejects its use. While considerable care is taken in the production of this and all issues, no responsibility can be accepted for any errors or omissions, unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork, etc.

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Submissions for positions on our editorial advisory board will be accepted by email only. Please send your qualifications to info@ AVISIAN.com

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PERSPECTIVE

The ID card’s role in campus change and evolution ANDREW HUDSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

Card offices are navigating a challenging era on campus. Cultural changes brought on, at least in part, by technology are creating a dichotomy of sorts when it comes to campus card services.

We seem to be going in two opposing directions simultaneously. As explored in this issue, there are card-supported services that may no longer need the plastic credential or may be primed to leapfrog it altogether. But at the same time, new and novel student services continue to emerge, opening new doors for the student ID. This dichotomy leaves some fearing that we’re racing against obsolescence, while others see opportunity in expanding future roles.

In the cover story, we delve into campus laundry, how it’s priced, and crucially, how institutions are executing laundry transactions. Now commonplace, campus laundry operations are moving into the realm of mobile apps and web portals, morphing the age-old chore into something akin to a concierge service.

Some institutions are abandoning card-based laundry while others are leveraging Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities via the mobile device to circumvent the use of a traditional card.

Other services, however, are creating new inroads for the campus card as evidenced by our feature on reusable take-out containers. With institutions now throwing their support behind “green” initiatives to reduce waste and carbon footprints, solutions like those profiled at the University of California, Merced and Virginia Tech are prime candidates for campus card integration.

Enabling students to use their campus card for utilities that directly address hot-button issues – like supporting the environment – only further establishes the ID card as an integral tool for the modern student. Beyond the feel-good factor, cards are helping institutions to achieve real cost savings and improving the student experience.

Let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with new technologies and ways of doing things. But being on the “bleeding edge” doesn’t have to mean integrating the latest technologies. It could be as simple as progressively implementing new functions to the existing campus card.

As the campus continues to evolve it will be key for card offices to identify new opportunities for the campus card but also be willing to let go of services that no longer make sense.

To best serve our institutions in the future we will need balance, strategically choosing the campus card in some instances and boldly exploring alternatives in others.

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ID SHORTS HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEB

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APRIVA OFFERS UNATTENDED EMV READER FOR CAMPUS PARKING

staff, and visitor card data,” explains Palay.

Payment solution provider, Apriva, completed EMV certification for a new unattended card reader that can accept both campus card payments as well as EMV chip-enabled bankcards.

The BV1000 card reader, developed

by Globalcom Engineering, connects through the Apriva Gateway to enable secure payment options in self-service retail environments such as parking garages and car washes. The device features a rugged design for outdoor use and can withstand extreme weather conditions.

“Our recent EMV certification for the BV1000 device over Apriva’s Gateway provides a unique opportunity for campus environments,” says Russ Palay, Product Director, Market Solutions at Apriva. “Campuses can offer an EMV solution for their unattended parking garages, as well as other unattended or self-service environments.”

As the move to EMV progresses, it is essential that campuses migrate to EMV-accepting payment terminals in all areas where the institution functions as a merchant. “Providing an EMV solution to the campus market for these unattended environments is critical, not only to adhering to card association directives around chip card acceptance but also to meeting data security protection requirements for securely processing student,

SODEXO PARTNERS WITH TAPINGO

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Winter 2016

Sodexo, food service provider for college campuses, and mobile commerce application for campus dining, Tapingo, have partnered to bring mobile ordering to Sodexo campus clients across North America.

Together with Tapingo’s native apps, students, faculty, staff and community members at Sodexo-served campuses will be able to order food through their campus dining program and choose from either pick-up or delivery options. The partnership is intended to both enhance the student experience by providing more convenient dining options, as well as en-

able Sodexo’s campus dining operations to function more efficiently.

“We work with institutions that prioritize quality of life for students, faculty, and staff, and Tapingo is the only solution that can meet Sodexo’s goals of positively transforming campus dining,” says Bill Lacey, senior vice president at Sodexo.

“This partnership provides our campuses with an exciting, innovative service that not only increases satisfaction, but also empowers community members to enjoy healthy, high-quality meals and snacks that suit their on-the-go lifestyles.”

Serving as the campus dining provider to more than 850 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, Sodexo will roll out the Tapingo service to campuses in both countries. During the fall 2016 semester, Tapingo will include top Sodexo campuses in its deployment schedule, which is expected to see 100

ID SHORTS

campuses join the Tapingo network. The move will effectively extend Tapingo’s reach to 25% of major four-year U.S. universities.

“We’re thrilled to partner with a company of Sodexo’s caliber and reputation,” says Jeff Hardy, Tapingo’s Chief Business Officer. “We’ve made it our mission to make buying better on every college in America. Students and faculty are more strapped for time than ever, and we want to give them that time back. We look forward to bringing our technology and insights to Sodexo campuses across the country.”

HEARTLAND PROVIDES ONECARD SOLUTION FOR COLLEGE PREP CAMPUS The one-card formula doesn’t just suit college campuses, it can also be applied to other verticals and K12 environments to refine identity management processes.

Despite a large portion of Heartland OneCard’s business residing on collegiate campuses, the company also works to meet the needs of corporate, preparatory and academy campuses. A recent addition is Oaks Christian School – a private, college preparatory school located in Westlake Village, Calif.

Since opening its doors in 2000, Oaks Christian has experienced rapid growth, with nearly 500 students currently enrolled in grades 5 through 8 and a further 1,000 students in grades 9 through 12.

To meet the school’s expansions, Oaks Christian was intent on providing a better overall student experience, with its leadership determining that a comprehensive campus card system could help them achieve that goal. The school’s previous ID card system lacked cohesion and was set up to operate multiple individual solutions independently, such as using a standard retail gift card for purchases in the school’s dining facilities. The goal

was to bring the existing systems and functions together into a single program and add further functionality to the ID. Oaks Christian was searching for a partner and found the ideal fit with Heartland. “OneCard has enabled us to operate more efficiently while increasing services,” says Darrell Parker, Director of Information Systems at Oaks Christian School. “They have been there for us every step of the way and we are happy we’ve chosen Heartland as our campus card partner.”

In the first phase of implementation, Oaks Christian launched a new, redesigned ID card, as well as added the ability for the new credential to be used in the school’s dining facilities and bookstore to make purchases. Students are also able to pay for on-campus printing with the new credentials through integration with PaperCut. The Oaks Christian dining facilities were also in need of a new point-of-sale (POS) solution. The school wanted to implement new terminals with a fresh look, sleeker profile, and that was reflective of the campus’ use of new technology. The school opted to deploy 18 OneCard Tablet POS terminals making Oaks Christian the first campus of its kind to use tablet POS as its standard terminals.

Another area in need of overhaul was account management. The implementation of OneWeb, OneCard’s online account management portal, enables parents to add funds to their student’s

account and students to check their balances, view transactions and connect with their OneCard.

Oaks Christian has also embraced OneCard Mobile, Heartland’s mobile app that acts as a student’s single point of access to campus services. OneCard Mobile allows students to use their smartphone as a virtual ID card, to make purchases and to manage their OneCard account.

Future plans for the OneCard at Oaks Christian include integration with campus vending machines, concession stand purchases at athletic events and payments at the school box office for event ticketing.

GEORGIA TECH REVAMPS CARD DESIGN, ADDS CONTACTLESS The Georgia Tech BuzzCard donned a new look this fall as incoming freshmen receiving a redesigned credential.

According to an official university release, the new card features a contemporary design that includes a hologram highlighting Tech Tower – a campus landmark. The new design comes after the previous BuzzCard’s thirteen-year lifespan beginning in 2003.

Along with a new design, the updated BuzzCard also introduces contactless technology, complementing the existing proximity technology that has long existed in all BuzzCards. The new

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multi-technology credentials will work seamlessly as the physical access control systems on Georgia Tech’s campus are upgraded over the next several years.

Incoming students along with new faculty, staff and affiliates started receiving the new BuzzCard credentials during summer 2016. The BuzzCard Center began issuing cards to the rest of the campus community at the start of the fall semester.

EAST MISSISSIPPI COMMUNITY COLLEGE OPTS FOR TOTALCARD East Mississippi Community College (EMCC) partnered with BadgePass to implement the company’s TotalCard solution as the college’s new one card system.

Though the prior system was working, it had grown cumbersome for the IT department to maintain. EMCC wanted to implement a solution that allowed for customized ID card production and provided support for dining and meal plan management on campus for its population of 5,500.

“One of our biggest concerns was being able to seamlessly integrate with our existing student information system

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database for card production for students and faculty members,” says Jeff Harrell, Network Administrator at Eastern Mississippi Community College. “We created a few SQL views that include information such as name, ID number, meal plans and housing number. Since all the information comes directly from our student information system, the library staff, who issue the ID cards, have no extra data entry.”

EMCC is leveraging TotalCard’s badge production module, Identity Manager. “When we switched from our previous software to this, I think we spent 5-10 minutes training the library staff and sent a short email describing the process. It’s that easy,” adds Harrell.

EMCC currently offers a faculty meal plan and three meal plan options for students, which combine meal plans and flexible dining dollars, all of which are easily accommodated in the system. The college utilizes TotalCard’s point-of-sale terminals for dining and meal plan management at three locations on campus, with plans to expand and add TotalCard’s bookstore and access control application’s in the future.

CHICAGOLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT IMPLEMENTS FINGERPRINT IN CAFETERIA Beginning with the new school year, students in the Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 can check out lunch items with their fingerprints rather than their ID cards.

According to the Lake Zurich Courier, Lake Zurich will join a host of other area school districts embracing biometrics on campus. District officials say that the optional fingerprint payment system will

boost efficiency by increasing throughput at the lunch line.

With some expressing concerns over student privacy the initiative will remain optional for now. “The option of using biometric is being implemented as a convenience to avoid issues with the need to carry and retain a payment card,” said district board President Doug Goldberg in a statement to the Courier. “It is one option of the payment system and is not mandatory.”

The district approved the biometric initiative in February, as it looked to phase out its current food-service software. After assessing a number of options that would simplify student lunch payments and make funding student accounts more convenient for parents, Lake Zurich landed on Geneva, Ill.-based biometric startup, PushCoin.

A cloud-based, centralized payment system, PushCoin enables a school web store capability, parent portal, administrative site and a point-of-sale app.

PushCoin also adds email notifications for low account balances, the ability to view transaction history, and the option to transfer funds from one child’s account to another.

In response to concerns about the program – and to fingerprint technology as a wholePushCoin insists that significant attention is paid to the protection of student privacy and that the system does not store or send images of fingerprints.

Moreover, any student fingerprint data older than 120 days is deleted.

The neighboring Geneva District 304 started using PushCoin as a point-of-sale system for food services in 2014 and later added web store capabilities in 2015. The addition of the web store saw the number of transactions increase dramatically from 65,605 in 2014 to 491,886 in 2015.

The web store supports the payment of registration fees, field trip costs and school apparel among other expenses.

As for privacy concerns, of the 5,668

ID SHORTS

students in District 304, less than 15% opted out of the program.

NORTHWESTERN REDESIGNS THE WILDCARD, EXPANDS USE OF SMART CARDS Northwestern University redesigned its Wildcard and began issuing the new credentials August 1.

According to a release from Northwestern’s WildCard office, the transition will boost campus security and add new conveniences to the university’s cardholders. The HID iCLASS cards will be

used by students to enter their dorms, check books out at the library, access parking lots and enter secure campus facilities.

Four residence halls on campus were equipped to support the use of smart card access by the time students started classes in the fall. The cards will also be used for dorm room access. University officials intend to add all campus buildings to the new card access system within a four-year period.

All new incoming 2016-2017 students are issued the newly redesigned Wildcard, while a majority of existing students, faculty and staff were able to up-

grade to the new design on November 1 at no cost. Cardholders already carrying a recently issued chip credential, however, are required to pay a $25 upgrade fee or wait until their card expires to obtain the new design.

Explore online for up-to-the-minute news and insight on identity and security technologies for the campus and university market. Articles, podcasts and videos are added daily at CR80News.com

Best in class service & support on all our products and offerings, contact ColorID today to learn more about your CHOICE

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FRE FRE E

FRE E

CARDS, CASH OR FREE?

THE FUTURE OF

PAYMENT

IN CAMPUS

LAUNDRY

ANDREW HUDSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, AVISIAN PUBLICATIONS

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For many college students, leaving the proverbial nest means leaving behind some amenities often taken for granted. One of those, provided the student isn’t within a short drive of home, is having their laundry done for them. In campus residence halls, students must muster up the motivation to do their own laundry.

From a campus perspective, laundry isn’t just one of the oldest student services but one of the earliest supported by the campus card.

But as with everything else on campus, laundry services are subject to the changing tides of technology and evolving service models.

Institutions are navigating how to best price laundry services and deploy new technologies like mobile apps. They are even reevaluating the future of the campus card in laundry facilities.

THE PRICE IS RIGHT Institutions have options when it comes to charging students for laundry service that include pay-per-use, pay-per-semester or even so-called complimentary service.

“When it comes to per-use charges, I think the advantage to the student is that they only pay for what they actually use,” says Steve Swingler, director, software development, CBORD. “For the campus, the advantage is that students are less likely to tie up a washer and dryer for, say, a single towel if they have to pay for each load.”

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STUDENTS WANT A RELIABLE, SIMPLE AND CONVENIENT SOLUTION. THEY WANT TO WASH THEIR CLOTHES AND PAY FOR IT IN THE WAY THEY'RE MOST COMFORTABLE – WITH THE ID CARD, CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD.

Pay-per-use is further fragmented by payment method with the seemingly archaic coin still playing a bit-part role.

“Those who still accept coins are looking to get away from it, so I don’t think it has a future,” Swingler says.

Heartland OneCard director of sales, Fred Emery, sees a small and dwindling number of campuses still holding onto the cash option. “Coins may still be accepted as a form of payment, but even in those instances campuses are not providing change machines,” he says.

The shift, instead, has been to an “any card in your wallet” platform where both a student’s campus card and standard credit or debit card are accepted in laundry facilities, explains Emery.

“Insights specific to laundry aside, the themes that I hear from students regardless of the service are ‘give me options,’ ‘give me convenience,’ and ‘incorporate technology,’” Swingler says.

Another benefit of card system integration and more advanced hardware is that campuses are afforded increased pricing flexibility. “Newer, variable-price machines enable campuses to charge different rates based on the type of laundry load including higher prices for longer cycles, extra rinses or hot-water washes,” says Heartland’s Emery.

“We see a variety of pricing options at campuses with some charging one price if change is used, a different price if a credit or debit card is used, and a an-

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other price if a campus card is used,” says Emery. “Many campuses offer discounts for OneCard use or even variable pricing based on the time of day with lower pricing offered at non-peak laundry times.”

There may also be a hardware benefit to the pay-per-use structure. “Some of the advantages we see when using a card based laundry system and charging a per-use laundry fee is reduced wear and tear on the laundry machines,” Emery says. “The laundry machines do not wear out as quickly, costs are recovered for machine use and repair and also maintenance concerns are reported a lot quicker.”

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND Another common pricing structure is a semester fee that enables residential students to use laundry facilities without paying each time they activate a machine.

“What we most often see is that the laundry fee, if not a per-use or onetime direct laundry fee, is often rolled up within other housing fees, but it is not typically free,” says Emery. “For the students the advantage of a semester fee is that it’s easy for them, and they don’t have to budget for laundry.”

“The per-semester model is perhaps the simplest option for a campus, particularly if it’s mandatory for residents and they don’t put any controls on the machines to verify eligibility,” Swingler

says. “I’ve seen posted rates from $35 to $65 per semester.”

External vendors that contract with campuses to provide and laundry facilities have some pretty simple math to figure out the cost per student, explains Swingler. Campuses that choose to operate the machines internally have to work a little harder to work out their costs.

It’s also worth noting that the persemester fee means different things to different people. From a student perspective this can often be misconstrued as being free, making true complimentary service a bit of a misnomer.

Swingler references personal experience on the matter. “Laundry seems ‘free’ to my freshman daughter, but as a parent, I understand that free really means prepaid because it’s built into the charge for her room,” he explains. “One advantage to this, however, is that student’s don’t complain about yet another fee, or appeal for the ability to opt out of the fee in favor of going home on the weekend to do their laundry.”

But there can also be disadvantages to the semester fee. “We have seen reports of greatly increased laundry cycles and wear and tear from increased usage,” says Heartland’s Emery. “If they are not paying for the cycle students are more likely to, for example, wash a single pair of jeans that they want for going out that night rather than waiting to do a full load.”

This out of sight, out of mind perception may lead to increased utilization by residents, but it could also open the door to fraudulent use. “Some campuses have reported that non-residents or even nonstudents are bringing in their laundry since it does not require payment at the time of use,” Emery says.

The dilemma of laundry access is one of the ancillary concerns that will likely divide opinion.

“Very few off-campus citizens bring their laundry onto college campuses instead of using a public laundry mat,” says Robert Huber, campus card business consultant. “It’s time consuming

and tedious to lug a pile of dirty clothes into a campus, and even if they did most laundry facilities are guarded behind residence hall access security.”

As an added measure, there’s always the option of installing an access reader at the laundry room door so that only students are permitted to use the facility, Huber says. “All residential students need a campus card so it makes sense to leverage it.”

This speaks to laundry best practices, and as a general rule if non-residents are a concern then a laundry facility should reside behind at least one layer of privileged access.

We also see laundry readers being used, not for payment, but to limit use to eligible students in a residence facility and track users, Emery says. “Alternatively, some campuses are installing access control solutions on the laundry room doors to control entry.”

THE LAUNDRY FORMULA The current formula sees laundry machines coupled with card readers that accept per-use payments via the campus card transaction system.

“Most laundry contractors can – and many prefer to – provide a multi-tender

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electronic payment reader as part of an agreement,” says Huber. “Contractors no longer have to deal with the vulnerability and expenses associated with cash handling and they reduce potential equipment pilferage.”

It’s also common for contractorprovided readers to be wireless or use a separate data line, which on the campus

side, can helps to minimize PCI compliance concerns if debit and credit cards are accepted, explains Huber. “With these readers being online, the contractor or monitoring service knows immediately when a laundry machine isn’t working and arrange to have the machine serviced without relying on someone reporting it,” he adds.

CBORD deploys a single reader and controller for each laundry room rather than a dedicated reader on individual machines. “Our current solution also has an interface board at each washer and dryer, but as intelligent networked machines become more common, that could change,” Swingler explains.

Campus laundry: A brief history of dirty laundry While laundry isn’t typically seen as a life-saving service, it does – like any superhero – have an origin story. Campus card industry consultant, Robert Huber, has seen campus laundry evolve to reflect changing college life.

“At the onset of campus laundry, most campuses used coins, re-usable or single-use tokens, and rechargeable or throw away cards,” Huber says.

The days of coin payment are for the most part behind us – and for good reason. “At that time, institutions deployed labor-intensive change machines either in each laundry room or for security reasons in the residence hall lobby,” Huber recalls. “This meant that front desks had to keep lots of change handy – again, a security risk and a labor intensive process.”

Whether done by the university, a laundry machine contractor, or a third-party coin collector, the single greatest problem with coin-based devices is the collection process.

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“Reconciliation of coins has always been laborious and requires auditing and verification that the cash retrieved matches the transactions,” explains Huber. And, of course, pilferage was a concern and vandalism of coin-laden machines was not uncommon.

As an alternative, many campuses opted to add a thin magnetic stripe, often called a vending or junk stripe, to their campus card to enable offline stored value payments.

This allowed them to utilize the student ID card instead of requiring students to carry a dedicated laundry card, Huber says. “But this strategy necessitated the purchase and secure mounting of cash-to-card machines for the secondary stripe,” he adds.

Cash-to-card machines that required the acceptance of bills posed an increased security risk of break-ins wherever the machines were located, and carried hefty cash-handling expenses, Huber explains. These eventually were replaced by or

complemented with automatic debit machines that facilitate revalue using credit or debit card.

As another alternative, campuses began incorporating laundry payments into the “flex” account program. This alleviated some of the security concerns and increased profitability, and added another valuable utility to the student flex account.

There were also growing pains in the wiring of laundry machines. “If the patch cord running between the reader and the washer wasn’t engineered properly to the individual machine, then sometimes the water would fail to shut off, causing floods in the laundry room,” says Huber. “In the mid 1980s,

many washing machine brands were different and campus personnel had to custom engineer readers for each brand. Vendors soon took notice and began selling laundry controllers.”

In the years since, many campuses continued to accept both cash and electronic forms of payment. As a standard practice today, however, Huber sees little reason to maintain antiquated methods.

“I would recommend accepting only electronic forms of payment – campus card or bankcard – thus eliminating all forms of cash in residence hall laundries,” Huber explains.

“This reduces the security vulnerability of not only the machines, but more importantly, the residents as well.”

CBORD’s hardware controllers and interfaces enable cards to be used either to make payment or verify eligibility for free laundry, he says. “We also offer software solutions including and LaundryView and WebManager Laundry to allow students to see machine availability and load status,” he adds. “And from our MobileID student app, students are able to pay for and start machines from their smartphones.”

Heartland’s laundry solution is called WaveRider. A deployment typically consists of a WaveReader connected to each washer and dryer via a wiring harness and a single wall-mounted WaveController per room. “The WaveController is basically the brains of the operation.

It communicates to each WaveReader wirelessly to accept and process both the OneCard and credit or debit card transactions from the WaveReaders,” Emery explains.

WaveRider is wireless both for network communication and for communication between the wall-mounted controller and the readers. This can reduce implementation costs as wiring is not needed to each laundry machine, and it also allows for communication over cellular broadband to help campuses alleviate PCI concerns, adds Emery.

FOR STUDENTS THE ADVANTAGE OF A SEMESTER FEE IS THAT IT’S EASY FOR THEM, AND THEY DON’T HAVE TO BUDGET FOR LAUNDRY “WaveRider supports EMV, NFC, ApplePay, amenity cards and more,” says Emery. “Through a mobile app, students can view machine status, see available machines, receive notifications when machines become available and receive alerts when their laundry cycle is complete.”

Campuses or laundry operators use Heartland’s WaveCentral system to configure and monitor their network of laundry facilities. This enables campuses to receive valuable information on what’s going on in the laundry rooms, including machine status, system auditing and service notifications,” says Emery.

OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS For most students, parental laundry service ends when they set foot on campus.

The process of sorting, loading and folding remains for modern students as it did for prior generations. But just because the chore itself has not changed, that doesn’t mean that the way in which laundry service is delivered can’t evolve.

“A campus that is looking to revamp laundry operations should discuss goals and student needs with their internal team or contracted laundry provider and seek input from their students,” says Emery. “Student focus groups are a great way to determine what services should be offered and participants can serve as a sounding board for different concepts.”

It’s likely, however, that most student polling and focus groups will share a common thread. “What students want is a reliable solution that is simple to use and convenient,” says Emery. “They want to wash their clothes and pay for it in the way they are most comfortable with – the ID card, credit card or debit card.”

The future of the campus laundry will also center on the measured addition of advanced technology. “Secondary services – in particular mobile apps – that add convenience that enable students pay for their laundry, add funds or to view machine status and receive notifications when their laundry cycle is complete will be huge assets.”

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Going green, saving green Campus cards power reusable container systems in campus dining Virtually every institution regardless of its size has some sort of sustainability or “green” initiative on campus. It boils down to a desire to minimize unnecessary waste and cut potential cost associated with older, less environmentally economic practices.

Green-campus initiatives abound in food services and dining halls. No matter how you cut it, dining facilities can be wasteful operations with piles of uneaten or neglected food and scores of single use take-out containers used by on-the-go students.

But campuses are finding a solution that effectively kills both these birds with a single stone. OZZI is a system that leverages automated kiosks and reusable, returnable takeout containers to both cut campus waste and alleviate costs previously devoted to disposable containers and flatware.

On many OZZI campuses, the student ID card is helping to power this new environmental initiative.

THE SKINNY The OZZI sales pitch is fairly straightforward – help a campus reduce landfill waste by collecting reusable eco-containers in lieu of disposable products and cut costs associated with waste hauling and the purchase of single use paper or Styrofoam containers.

One OZZI campus, Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, reports spending $60,000 per year to purchase disposable to-go boxes. In addition the campus spends a significant amount on the removal of the waste, which includes both custodial labor and the solid waste bill.

A typical campus OZZI deployment sees the company’s reusable containers placed in the dining hall for students to fill with food at which point the student reports to the cashier to checkout.

The containers, themselves, are durable, and feature bar codes on the bottom so purchases can be tracked. Each container will withstand roughly 200 washes before being recycled again. The containers are not meant to be washed by students before being reused; rather they must be sanitized between uses by a university’s dining services department.

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An automated kiosk, meanwhile, is placed in the dining hall and other strategic locations where students can return used takeout containers. For the student, the process couldn’t be simpler, as they need only insert the reusable container into the kiosk’s front slot with the container’s barcode facing up, and retrieve the OZZI token for the next container.

Each kiosk is 36” x 30” x 72”, holds 125 reusable eco-containers, 200 return tokens, and occupies less than 12 square feet of floor space.

And at this point, I know what you’re thinking … Tokens?

One unusual caveat to OZZI’s kiosk system is that it has traditionally leveraged metal tokens as the default means of container reconciliation. This introduces an unnecessary complication to the

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process, as tokens simply don’t make sense on college campuses where card systems can be leveraged to make container return and checkout a breeze.

MERCED PAVES NEW ROADS The metal token problem was one of the first aspects of the OZZI system that was overhauled at the University of California, Merced – one of the first campuses on the West Coast to adopt the solution. Abraham Cereno, Associate Director, CatCard Program and Application Systems at UC Merced, identified the need to integrate the OZZI system with the university’s existing campus card infrastructure in order to get the best out of the solution.

Cereno worked together with OZZI personnel to integrate the company’s kiosk with UC Merced’s campus card system

provided by CBORD. Cereno and the rest of the Catcard office team completed the full integration, tracking, managing, monitoring, reporting, and mobile app support in-house. At the conclusion of the integration, UC Merced was first institution to achieve campus card integration with the OZZI system.

As part of the card integration with OZZI, Cereno and the CatCard team took the program a step further by tethering OZZI account balances with the university’s myCatPerks mobile app. This introduced a rewards/loyalty facet to the initiative, and it enables students to view their OZZI balance – the number of virtual tokens they have left – and see how many pounds of waste they have saved individually, as well as the campus’ running total.

UC Merced’s OZZI initiative officially began in the fall of 2012. In the year prior,

WE SAW A HUGE SHIFT IN STUDENT TO-GO CULTURE WHEN WE COMBINED OZZI WITH A SURCHARGE ON SINGLE USE CONTAINERS. WE REDUCED THE NUMBER OF DISPOSABLE CONTAINERS BY MORE THAN 700,000 IN ONE ACADEMIC YEAR – A DROP OF NEARLY 50% FROM THE YEAR BEFORE.

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the university used 250,000 take-out containers of various sizes before making the OZZI’s reusable containers the only option for the future.

The initial iteration of Merced’s deployment required a first-time user to buy into the program at $5.00 for their first OZZI container. Students could then visit a kiosk to return the used container, and receive either a metal token for the next container or an eToken on their meal plan. If at the end of the year, the user still has a metal token or eToken left, they would get the initial $5 buy in back as a credit to their meal plan account.

For those users who received the final credit, the program ended up costing nothing. It actually saved the user money over time by not charging the previous $0.50 per-meal takeout surcharge that the university assessed to cover the cost of take-out containers.

Later, the university made refinements and launched what it calls “OZZI v2.0.”

With v2.0, the university eliminated the $5.00 deposit at the point of sale when checking out a container. Users can check out up to three containers at a time and are sent periodic email reminders to return them. A $5.00 fee is assessed to users meal plan accounts for any containers not returned within 72 hours.

As for checkout, dining hall cashiers identify whether a student has an OZZI container and asks which form of payment the student wishes to use. If the student opts for campus card, the system will automatically track the container and no fee is charged. Even if they choose to pay for the meal and container with cash or a credit or debit card, they must still present their CatCard for container tracking purposes.

OZZI AT VIRGINIA TECH OZZI has been thriving on campus at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg since the fall of 2014.

“We first heard about OZZI through NACUFS and a visit to the University of

OZZI container sizes 3 compartment takeaway container 5”x5”x3” single entree box 8”x8”x2.5” single entree box 9”x9”x2.5” single entree box 16 oz. hot/cold drink cup 9”x6”x2.5” half-size entree container Soup/noodle bowl container Recyclable fork, spoon, soup spoon and knife Compostable fork, spoon and knife All food containers are microwave, freezer and commercial dishwasher safe.

Maryland,” says Bill Hess, Associate Director, Virginia Tech Dining Services. “Dining Services was the lead department on the project with assistance from the Green RFP student submission process, which is run by the Office of Sustainability at Virginia Tech.”

Virginia tech first trialed OZZI in 2014, and has since expanded its deployment. “In the first year the program was only available in one dining center so it wasn’t convenient for students if they were not a frequent user of that location,” Hess explains. “We currently have three operational OZZI units in our three busiest dining centers, and there’s a fourth on the way.”

Following the successful trial period, Virginia Tech doubled down on the program in 2015, in part, with funding from the university’s student government association and Housing and Resident Life, Hess says.

“In 2015 the program saw a green container in every on-campus resident’s room, one for each resident,” he adds. “While successful in driving the program forward, we only saw a return rate of about 40% on the initial 10,000 distributed containers.”

With funding again from the university’s SGA in 2016, Hess says there has been no outlay departmentally in purchasing the containers. Additionally, the start of the 2016 academic year marked the start of campus card integration for Virginia Tech’s OZZI machines.

Card integration at Virginia Tech was inevitable, and the system’s use of metal tokens predictably posed a problem. “In our second year with OZZI the most prevalent feedback – by a large margin – was lost tokens,” Hess says. “We have a system now that uses our Hokie Passport at both the time of checkout at the point of sale and at check in at the OZZI kiosk.”

Hokie Passport integration took about six months working with OZZI personnel, an independent contract programmer and the Hokie Passport office, explains Hess. “We are now able to track where the containers are and who has them,” he adds. “The student receives an email for each of these transactions and knows exactly where they stand in outstanding containers.”

Card integration also opened the door for new promotional offers to incentivize use of the reusable containers. “To begin 2016, we instituted three free virtual tokens on every student’s Hokie Passport account following our transition to card swipes from the old tokens,” explains Hess. “The SGA provided 6,000 containers again this year, and we will be charging $3.00 for any lost container as of the last day of class in fall and spring.”

SPREADING THE WORD As with any other student-facing campus initiative, marketing is a key facet to achieving success and student buy in. This has been realized at Virginia Tech through a series of marketing efforts, including a dedicated #VTReusable Twitter hashtag.

“Marketing the program is key to its success in many ways. First, you have to market the program to a new group of students and customers every year, as well as retrain those returning students,” says Hess. “Second, if you don’t keep the program in forefront of both customer and employee minds, they can slip into bad habits.

To help combat this, we have had several other successful marketing campaigns about reducing the use of compostable containers.”

In year two, student buy-in was more directly addressed, and with a more active user base new trends began to emerge. “We saw a huge shift in student to-go culture when we combined the reusable OZZI program with a surcharge on compostable containers of $0.10 per container,” Hess says. “We reduced the number of disposable 9”x9” containers used by over 700,000 in one academic year – a drop of nearly 50% from 1.3 million the year before.”

Hess is seeing similar numbers in the first half of the fall 2016 semester, and the results from a waste standpoint, are impressive.

“The system has removed the equivalent of three 48-foot shipping crates worth of trash from of our waste stream,” he says.

Reusable takeout containers make sense when you think about it. Who wouldn’t want to cut back on dining hall waste, hauling costs and eliminate expenses associated with paper, compostable and Styrofoam containers? And with OZZI now on campus at some 80 universities spanning both coasts, it seems the idea is catching on fast.

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Future-proofing your campus card operation Strategic questions that every campus card director should be asking ROBERT C. HUBER, CMC, CPCM, CAMPUS CARD BUSINESS CONSULTANT

The pig in the python from Landon Jones’ classic, “Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation,” is the perfect visual analogy to underscore the dramatic global impact of a generation during its lifetime.

In 1980, Jones accurately chronicled and predicted numerous cultural waves from disposable diapers to electronic toys, intellectual games, clothing trends, loud music, revolutionary politics, organic food, vacation clubs, affordable transportation, distance education, fitness clubs, healthcare options and active retirement communities among others.

And generational trends are no less impactful today as they were with the Baby Boomers. Today, 60% of Millennials still live with their parents, most are single and most don’t own an automobile. Moreover, a staggering 90% own at least two mobile devices and keep at least one charging hub in their bedroom.

Still comfortable with their overly protective “helicopter parents,” Millennials continue to generate cultural shifts throughout our society – sparking trends in digital technology, team workplaces, wireless media, mobile payments, mobile device usage, advertising, team decision making, job entitlement, anti-smoking, healthy eating, debt evasion, parental reliance, and challenging conventional business practices.

With the volatile mixture of the relentless cravings of Millennials and their helicopter parents, and the undeniable explosion of technology, the 30-year old Campus Card Industry finds itself at a crossroads.

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It must either dramatically transform itself into a more relevant Virtual Credential Services (VCS) provider in the way that eTickets have done, or it will be purposely discarded from future consideration and be replaced by other FinTech options promoted by the neurotic social media echo chamber.

To avoid obsolescence campus card programs, systems and operations must begin to strategize, transform and position their ecosystems and do so before the class of 2020 leaves their provisional nest.

Mounting evidence from Beloit College’s latest Mindset List and RHA’s “Campus Card Industry Business Forecast” echo this, with the Beloit’s Mindset list aptly describing Millennials as “an impatient generation learning how to be patient.”

As a first step, campus card directors and their respective business and student affairs administrators should schedule face-to-face – that’s in person, not Skype – meetings complete with whiteboards and strategic campus thinkers. Encourage a temporarily text-free zone and provide munchies and caffeine to maintain the energy level and creativity. As with U.S. Supreme Court hearings, this group’s initial meeting is not to make decisions, but rather honestly consider, ponder and value questions that need to be asked about the overall operation and the institutional ownership.

But why pool campus minds and ask these difficult questions in the first place?

The Baby Boomer and Millennial generations have both changed the world, and the next generation is about to decide whether

to attend class or just send their drone instead. So it’s vital that campus card offices open the future-proofing dialogue now in preparation for this next generation of college student and the role of the campus card operation.

1. WHAT IF OUR CAMPUS CARD VENDOR IS SOLD? The world, including the campus card industry, has evolved from 30-year private companies to private equity firms and mega international corporations. You may still be in love with your current provider, but ask what is being done now to insulate your campus card ecosystem in the event your card system vendor is acquired? What is your plan if you don’t get along with the new in-laws?

2. PROPRIETARY VENDOR HARDWARE, A WISE INVESTMENT? Thirty years ago, changing a campus card vendor required new campus wiring, hardware, software, card readers, a recarding of your campus, and the manual encoding of all cards and transferring of account balances. This was all provided that everyone on the conversion team could stay awake all weekend doing the work and were 100% accurate. If your campus card vendor is sold or acquired by a competitor, what existing proprietary hardware, if any, is guaranteed to be supported by the new vendor and for how long?

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3. DO WE STILL NEED RESIDENCE HALL LAUNDRY READERS? If you’ve ever lived in a residence hall, you know that local students tend to leave campus every Thursday or Friday, taking their dirty laundry home with them. Many institutions have simply mandated laundry fees as a means to providing a predictable revenue source, updated the appearance and safety of their laundry room facilities, and they’ve accomplished this all without any real parental objection. Why pay someone to be on-call during the weekends to care and feed laundry reader systems and fill change machines?

4. VENDING MACHINES: IS IT TIME TO CUT THE CORD?

hundreds of thousands of dollars they have invested were not as strategic as they had initially envisioned.

Would your institution be best served to just leapfrog contactless technology altogether and partner with a campus card vendor that will help you achieve mobile everything by 2020? Do you have a strategic plan to convert all current and future applications to mobile technology, bearing in mind that is what your mobile Millennial customers are expecting from you? Survey them and your business partners.

7. WHY ARE WE STILL MAKING CAMPUS CARDS ONSITE? Banks issue new bankcards overnight with no printers, film, ribbons or cardstock in their branch offices. How many card employees have you ever met at your local bank?

Campus card vendors and related suppliers can connect you with ‘service bureaus’ that can produce and deliver plastic cards in 1-3 days. Webpages, the Internet and photo upload programs are all revolutionizing the issuance process. This begs the question: Why staff a full-time office that only mass produces campus cards two weeks out of the year?

For decades, installing campus card only readers seemed like a prudent strategy to promote your credential and lessen competition from credit cards. Most dining service and bookstore contractors now insist on credit card acceptance, and many vending machine contractors are also providing multi-credential readers along with wireless reader technology, which also reduces PCI issues. All of this is vendor-agnostic and interoperable with any campus card vendor.

THE 30-YEAR OLD CAMPUS

5. IS IT TIME FOR A WEBSITE MAKEOVER?

CARD INDUSTRY FINDS ITSELF AT A CROSSROADS. IT MUST EITHER DRAMATICALLY TRANSFORM ITSELF INTO A MORE RELEVANT VIRTUAL CREDENTIAL SERVICES PROVIDER IN THE WAY THAT ETICKETS HAVE DONE, OR IT WILL BE PURPOSELY DISCARDED FROM FUTURE CONSIDERATION.

After all the blood, sweat and tears that everyone has invested in revising your campus card website, the thought of a site makeover can conjure nightmares comparable to recarding a campus.

If your website is more than five pages, and crucially, not mobile friendly, can you expect your mobile-driven Millennial customers or their helicopter parents to even look at it? If the answer is anything but a resounding “yes,” then it could be time for a comprehensive website makeover by a professional marketing firm. Another key consideration would be to make sure that all your marketing materials mirror your campus card website and vice versa.

6. SHOULD WE LEAPFROG TO MOBILE? Over the past two decades, vendors have each touted that their “flavor” of contactless is the best technology since HiCo magnetic stripes. Now many institutions feel that the headaches and

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8. WHY NOT MAKE PLASTIC CAMPUS CARDS OPTIONAL?

Once upon a time, institutions required that all students stand in line each fall (usually in the gymnasium) to have their official photo ID card produced by the Registrar’s Office. It was a process that repeated itself every year. But if you gave your students the option of standing in line only to be issued a “spare” plastic credential to be used just in case their smartphone battery is low, or registering their smartphone or smart watch the day they arrive on campus, which do you think they would choose? Survey your students.

9. WHEN DO WE PLAN TO CONVERT TO VIRTUAL CREDENTIALS? Most community colleges, hotels and airline frequent flyer programs have moved beyond issuing plastic cards, and somehow they still continue to be successful, promoting their programs and processing millions of dollars in transactions each day. So if most academic institutions now provide reliable online academic

registration, why can’t they also facilitate online registration of “virtual” credentials?

10. IS YOUR OFFICE A RECOGNIZED CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTER? There was a time when card offices were simply a sign on the counter of a busy Registrar’s Office, Bursar’s Office, Security Office or Food Service Manager’s Office in the back of the dining hall. But contemporary campus card offices should be setup as Customer Service Centers that shoulder many cross-divisional business functions and complimentary services.

This could be accomplished by providing valuable services in the vein of a visitor information center, offering campus maps, conference center capabilities, meal plan sales, fine arts and athletic ticket sales, parking passes, parking fee payments, special events information, campus mailing center, and more. Is your campus card office spending more 50% of its labor campus card cr80_ad_1.5-022216-2:Layout 1 than 3/7/16 4:38 PM on Page 1

MyPhoto

functions, or is it recognized as a one-stop customer service hub for your institution?

About the author: Robert C. Huber is a certified, vendor independent campus card business consultant, life-long entrepreneur and publisher of the “Campus Card Industry Business Forecast” found at AllCampusCard.com. In 1985, he developed a single multi-application “All-Campus Card” designed to last for four years. Simultaneously he promoted campus card offices, marketed as “one-stop shopping” centers, at a time when institutions were issuing numerous department cards, keys, stickers and punch cards – all valid for less than a year. He has assisted over 300 academic, healthcare and corporate campuses with the implementation of meal plan, food production, point-of-sale, vending, parking, door access, merchant and multi-application campus card transaction systems.

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Biometrics on campus: Convenience, security or both?

Whether it’s misinformation, concerns over personal data or a general reticence over the implementation of new technology, biometric solutions on campus are still not pervasive. And yet, successful university deployments of biometrics for access control, privilege control and authentication have already demonstrated the power of the technology.

At a global level, solutions like Apple’s Touch ID and others have made biometrics something of a mainstream technology.

And with college students among the most avid users of these consumer devices, comfort levels with regular use of biometrics has improved.

“We have seen the improvement in biometric applications in the security markets over the years, and we strongly feel that the improvement of hardware and software

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in the security markets pushed the phone providers to include biometric sensors in their phones, not vice versa,” explains Tim Ortscheid, government & business market manager for biometrics and access control for ColorID “From the consumer’s viewpoint they see the biometric readers in the phone and become more accepting of it in their daily lives.”

Alongside this evolving perception, the solutions themselves are improving. “It’s important to note that biometrics used for mobile phones are usually used as a oneto-one or a one-to-few biometric match,” Ortscheid explains referring to the fact that it is easier to check if two templates match rather than identify a template from a massive database. “But even high-end biometric products used for access control or real-time identification of an individual

can now provide a one-to-many match in just seconds.”

“Iris biometric applications, for example, can match an individual’s iris in a database of over a million in a second or less. There is a very distinct difference in the applications being used for phones and applications being used in the security markets,” Ortscheid explains. “Just because a device may use a fingerprint or iris, doesn’t mean it’s using the same algorithms and sensors as higher end security products.”

SECURITY VS. CONVENIENCE As biometric solutions continue to mature, campus administrators need to understand how the technology can be deployed, as well as the nature of the technology as it relates to the security-convenience spectrum.

“There can be a trade-off between security and convenience. If the main goal is convenience, the university should choose a system that is very easy to use, fast, and doesn’t require the use of a second factor of authentication – such as a card or PIN,” explains Todd Brooks, director of product management at ColorID. “The system should also have low false rejection rates or have the option to set those levels.”

Herein lies the heart of the security vs. convenience debate. Biometric systems can be tailored to fit the type of installation they are supporting, ratcheting the threshold of acceptance higher or lower based on the security needs of the application.

“Biometric matching is always based on a probability of a match. Because of these probabilities, different biometric modalities and systems have varying false rejection rates (FRR) and false acceptance rates (FAR),” Brooks explains. “Selection of a biometric modality and manufacturer must always take these values into account along with the intended application.”

For a low-security application that is designed for convenience, it may be permissible to tolerate the chance of an occasional false acceptance. Of course, a system would be less convenient if there were high false rejections, Brooks says.

“The opposite may be true for high-security applications. If convenience were not a factor, you wouldn’t care as much if there were false rejections. The most important concern is that there are never false acceptances,” he explains.

For example, a growing number of universities are implementing biometrics for access into dining halls, recreation centers and athletic events – all environments where ratcheting down the level of security in favor of quicker throughput and convenience is beneficial to the user experience.

On the other hand, if maximum security is the main goal, Brooks explains that choosing a system that offers two- or three-factor authentication and that has very low false acceptance rates would be ideal.

Security-based biometric applications include physical access to academic buildings, residence halls, secure labs, IT infrastructure, nuclear facilities and medical research facilities. Convenience applications, meanwhile, include dining, recreation center and sporting event access.

When it comes to campus deployments, the tides of security and convenience may be starting to turn. “Traditionally applications on campus have been more security focused,” Brooks says. “We have seen many biometric implementations for irradiator rooms, cadaver labs, server rooms, and other highly secure areas, but more recently we have seen a trend more towards convenience applications.”

Nevertheless, campuses looking to implement a so-called convenient biometric solution don’t have to sacrifice security.

“Today’s higher end biometric applications are both secure and convenient, which is why there is such growth in the biometric industry,” says Ortscheid. “I don’t believe that there’s a major distinction between the two anymore.”

“The products being used for the highsecurity laboratories many times are the exact same product being used for access into the rec center or the dining facilities,” he says. “This is important because your database of users can potentially use a product across campus without managing multiple databases or products; the university can have one common biometric structure across campus.”

BACK TO BASICS When it comes to deploying a biometric solution, there are a number of options that have to be considered.

“The first thing we do is try to educate university personnel about the technology,” Brooks says. “We talk about some of the privacy concerns that students and parents may have, as well as talk about the security of the technology as it relates to safeguarding their data.”

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Among the talking points are the biometrics basics. These include: As a best practice, biometric images are never stored. Once the image is captured, it is immediately used to create a biometric template and then discarded. The algorithms used to create these biometric templates are one-way hash algorithms and therefore the image cannot be recreated from the template.

Biometric algorithms are proprietary to the individual system being used so that templates from one system will not work for another system from a different manufacturer.

The inclusion of liveness detection is essential to prevent spoofing.

All data in the system is encrypted both at rest and in transit.

Universities typically have the option to create their own custom encryption

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keys for the biometric system to further protect data.

These considerations and others are all part of the biometric selection process. So too is educating the student population on the intent of the system.

“It’s imperative to choose the appropriate biometric modality to match the application in which it is being used,” Brooks says. “Once the biometric system has been chosen, it is equally important to provide education to students regarding the system, how it’s being used, and what benefits they will see from using the system.”

WAVE OF THE FUTURE Regardless of the number of active deployments, academic institutions are starting to take notice of biometric solutions to facilitate campus activities. “One reason is that the cost of the technology has decreased

in the last few years, making biometrics systems affordable,” Brooks says.

Add the fact that better systems have come to market in recent years, and the ever-present “cool factor,” and biometric systems begin to show more promise for campus environments and the tech-savvy students that populate them. “Universities are competing for the best students, and sometimes having the latest and most convenient technologies can be used as a recruiting tool,” Brooks adds.

“A good biometric product should always be both convenient and secure. This is what has led to a breakthrough in customer acceptance of biometric products,” says Ortscheid. “When you have a solution that couples both, customers can really see the value of updating systems.”

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Card offices benefit from local, on-site service and integration TOM STILES, IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS GROUP

Your campus card program is not just one system from one vendor. It is an ecosystem of cards, systems and databases that all need to work together. And when it comes to maintaining that ecosystem, service is paramount.

While there is discussion of which service model is best for your campus – on-site from regional dealer, depot service, or a hybrid mix – you need to consider your overall campus card system to best guarantee service for your various solutions from different vendors. These can include everything from one-card and ID badging to door access and housing solutions. You need to evaluate and determine which components are best supported remotely and which are better served by on-site attention.

If you have a problem, it often is not the card printer! For the ID system alone,

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the issue may be a cable, camera, printer ribbon, cardstock, or even a database connection to name a few. What if the cards are not operating correctly in a certain campus system? Is it the card, the reader, the software or the database at fault? You need a local card management expert to visit and help diagnose where the problem lies. The local technician can help with testing of the cards, confirming database connectivity and many other possible issues. This independent set of eyes can also help reduce potential finger pointing from various component vendors.

The purpose of the regional dealer is to support their local customers. A glimpse into their office shows shelves full of card printers, software, ribbons, plastic cards, replacement parts and more. Regional dealers also house an office with a full staff, a

service and training department, diagnostic equipment, and decades of experience.

The ISG, formed in 1982, is a network of 31 regional credential management solution providers that cover the USA and Canada. Combined, these dealers employ about 200 field service technicians. These technicians are manufacturer trained and certified and follow the ISG Service Certification program, which includes ongoing, continuing education. They also have the benefit of open sharing within the network of dealers. This enables member dealers to find solutions to problems beyond suggestions provided by the manufacturer.

While some providers tend to focus on large operations, we value all customers large and small. A benefit of local service is the ability to cost effectively support institutions that may only have a single printer and modest issuance needs.

Beyond local service, local consulting While the benefits of local service may be evident, there is a range of integration support that local service through the ISG and its family of dealers can deliver. We’re available to our customers to consult on a range of topics including:

field in the central database or share cardholder data with other systems like door access control, housing or food service so that cards are immediately activated or de-activated.

Smart card, EMV card, and mobile expertise

One example is the integration of San Jose area colleges into of Valley Transit Authority (VTA). Working with ISG dealer, Capture Technologies, these schools are able to issue personalized Transit cards that operate in the VTA and reduce fraudulent use of the card.

ISG dealers work closely with colleges and universities on integration projects that require expertise in data connectivity, smart cards and smart phones.

Transit integration

Database connectivity Often, a customer needs to connect an ID system to a central database like Banner or PeopleSoft. In other cases, schools want to populate the photo

from the contactless chip, and that number is passed to the VTA database so that it can be tracked, replaced if needed, and de-activated when needed.

Participating schools are San Jose City College, Mission College and Evergreen College.

Another example is the integration of the University of Washington card into transit.

In this solution, the university is able to issue a single ID card that works in the mass transit system as well as on campus applications.

Smart card transition

The area colleges issue the Eco Pass Clipper Card on site, complete with photo, college logo and other data. During the issuance process, the transit ID number is securely read

We strive to maintain ID systems for as long as the customer wants to keep them in use, and we do not force upgrades as soon as a manufacturer discontinues a product.

Our solutions are not only well supported, but they are also kept in peak condition by assuring that firmware, drivers, field updates and software are all kept current.

Additional advantages of the local dealer include rental units, re-carding services or support and rush supply orders.

In an era when single-office companies are attempting to provide nationwide service – using a hybrid model that combines depot service and periodic on-site maintenance – we stand by our belief that true local service always provides the best value.

To me, single-office service is akin to flying in a mechanic from Detroit to repair your Ford automobile, when you have a certified Ford dealer right down the street.

Any time you have to deal with an 800 number, diagnose or replace a printer, you lose valuable time from your real job. It is always better to have an experienced, local technician simply come in and fix the problem.

We work with many universities to discuss the transition to smart cards, and we can even help customers to “own their own keys,” a concept that

gives the school a purchasing independence for the cards, as well as better security.

Transitioning to smart cards can be a complex task, with a need for cooperation among various stakeholders and systems. ISG specialists provide an independent view of how to complete this.

Financial EMV cards ISG dealers are trained to work closely in the financial card EMV market. This is a huge benefit for any college that wants to issue financial branded cards that also operate in on-campus systems like door access control and cafeteria.

A LOCAL TECHNICIAN CAN HELP WITH TESTING OF CARDS, CONFIRM DATABASE CONNECTIVITY AND MANY OTHER ISSUES. THIS INDEPENDENT SET OF EYES CAN ALSO HELP REDUCE POTENTIAL FINGER POINTING FROM VARIOUS COMPONENT VENDORS. RELATIONSHIPS ARE KEY The hard costs that a university normally sees include service agreements, card stock, printer supplies, and ID systems. An added benefit of the local ISG dealer is expert consultation. With ISG dealers, this feature is free and does not require a long-term service agreement. Clients receive the same high level of support and expertise, and we will tailor the agreement to best fit your needs and budget.

With large vendors you are limited to just the products they offer. ISG solution providers have the independence to offer a variety of manufacturer products, and efficiently integrate the right ones together into a complete, working system.

What if you want to implement a simple tracking program, investigate portable badging systems, increase the speed of capture and enrollment, discuss different card printer technology, or review contactless smart card options? You always receive solid, independent advice and service from your local ISG dealer. It’s a relationship that we pride ourselves on.

Campus administrators have strong relationships with their local dealers. Our dealers recognize that their campuses appreciate seeing a familiar face that knows their systems and requirements. A vendor that reviews notes from a database before boarding an airplane just can’t compare to a trusted, local partner.

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George Mason moves to smart ID card system Multi-tech door access readers enable phased transition to contactless Like many universities George Mason is rapidly expanding its campus, constructing new facilities and residence halls, and deploying new services on a virtually continuous basis. The latest renovation for Virginia’s largest public university was an overhaul of the outdated Mason ID card system.

George Mason had been issuing Mason ID cards with only magnetic stripe technology. The cards wore out quickly and lacked the cryptographic capabilities to increase security. Plus, the university found it difficult to update and manage old campus door locks and cards.

They decided to deploy a more secure and comprehensive card solution that could better connect cardholders to new services and departments on campus.

Officials decided that greater campus security could be achieved by moving to contactless smart card technology. They also determined it could let the 30,000 Mason IDs be used for just not access control but other value-added applications and services on and off campus.

THE SOLUTION Working with HID Global and parent company ASSA ABLOY, George Mason designed an end-to-end ID solution that is enabling migration over a projected fiveyear period. It consists of three primary components.

First, George Mason will deploy HID Global multiCLASS SE readers, along with PERSONA Campus Software and SAR-

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GENT Passport locks from ASSA ABLOY. The multi-technology readers, locks and software support the legacy magstripe cards used on campus in addition to newer, contactless card technology.

Second, the university will issue Seos smart cards from HID Global. The Seos credentials were chosen for their advanced security, interoperability between the new locks and readers, and their ability to support multiple card applications. As an example, HID’s OMNIKEY desktop readers will extend the card’s use to check out library books and to pay for meals in campus dining locations.

Finally, HID’s FARGO DTC4500e ID card printers and encoders along with Asure ID card personalization software will power the campus card office. Cards are personalized with student information and at the same time both magstripe and Seos technologies are encoded in a single, inline issuance process. Total issuance time has been significantly reduced, data entry mistakes eliminated, and the new ID cards are printed at higher quality with more durable lamination.

“We were able to streamline the entire card process and set up a true one-stop shop that reduced wait times for students, produced a more durable, better looking card, and eliminated the hassle and costs of replacing cards that used to wear out too quickly,” says Jerry Baugh, Director of the Mason Card Office at George Mason University.

To date, George Mason has installed 3,500 new HID Global readers and ASSA

ABLOY locks and issued more than 12,000 new Mason ID cards to incoming freshmen.

The university expects to complete its card migration by 2017 with more readers and locks to follow.

The new Mason ID cards will initially be used for accessing academic facilities, residence halls, the campus library and dining services. Potential new applications include cashless payment for the Washington, D.C. transit system, time and attendance at the campus rec center, and the generation of one-time password (OTP) soft tokens to enable students and faculty to access cloud applications, data and other services in the future.

A VIEW TO THE FUTURE The university now has state-of-the-art campus security as well as real-time control when a lock-down or other changes are needed. The university can also more easily modify its access control system, including updating card privileges, revoking and replacing lost or stolen cards, and adding or removing applications, all while providing students convenient access to numerous aspects of campus life.

“For us, Seos is a short step. We want bigger, better, newer, faster. We know mobile credentials are coming and we want to be positioned,” says Danny Anthes, Senior Manager of Information Technology at George Mason University. “We know our readers are already there, so the ability for us to leverage mobile credentials, and send those to the phone, will be our next step.”