With the rollout of student smart cards, City of Sunderland College, the North East Regional Smartcard Consortium (NERSC), and Diginus Ltd. have started an exciting e-Learning journey. The smart card scheme is part of the larger NERSC initiative. Its goal is to make college life more fun for students and to make college administration easier.
NERSC is a group of 26 local governments in the North East of England that work together to do things. The consortium has big plans to give everyone in the region a smart card that can be used for many things and has strong authentication. The cards will be used to access local services from both the public and private sectors. This includes things like e-Health, e-Education, and access to sports, leisure, and entertainment facilities. The successful rollout at City of Sunderland College, where many thousands of cards are already in use, is the biggest example to date. NERSC wants to be seen as an example for other places in England and Europe to follow when they adopt and use these new technologies.
The project is based on an Open Source Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology that is used to create a highly secure digital identity solution. This approach brings low-cost technical solutions that are both strong and scalable to a field that has traditionally been hard and expensive. Diginus Ltd., a leading player in both local government and business PKI/smart card projects, is in charge of the PKI.
Fujitsu and ActivCard are two other companies that help NERSC with technology.
The City of Sunderland College has more than 24,000 students and 900 employees. NERSC is a group of 26 local governments in the North East of England that work together.
