Technology Sabha 2008

Smart card and RFID for governance

Tushar Mohanty, Associate Vice President-smart cards, Spanco

Vijay Kumar, Associate Vice President-RFID, Spanco

How smart cards and RFID can be well utilised for governance and where they are currently being used, this and more was presented by Tushar Mohanty, Associate Vice President-smart cards, Spanco and Vijay Kumar, Associate Vice President-RFID, Spanco. Mohanty started with explaining the primary purpose of a smart card, which is security, and went on to elaborate on some of the applications in which it can be useful. Applications that he elaborated upon were related to transport, ticketing, finance, e-Governance and payment. For transport, he explained the Gujarat driving license project and the success of the same. Talking about ticketing applications, Mohanty explained that by using smart cards for ticketing the bus conductor or driver can update the system within a short time. Andhra Pradesh is currently using this method and according to him, Spanco is ready to undertake more such projects. Mohanty said, “A smart card as the ration card will be a really great idea. In this, one can set limitations of ration for both, the vendor as well as the citizen, on the smart card” Further, a health card for health services and microfinance applications can be made available with the help of smart cards.

RFID, a technology that allows an object to be uniquely identified without line-of-sight contact was explained by Vijay Kumar who talked about various applications related to RFID and made a brief comparison of RFID and bar codes and argued that RFID is far better than simple bar codes and can provide more detail about an object. “Barcodes are one of the most common means of tagging goods, but how effectively one can find the defects in the goods is the question and that can be done by using RFID tags,” said Kumar. He listed some of the areas in which RFID can be useful. According to him, RFID can be used in shipping relocatable containers, railroads, supply chain, mining, postal, livestock, and airlines. From the security point of view, RFID can be used for ports and border control and by the department of defense. In terms of asset location and tracking, RFID is currently being used by libraries in India. But even after these benefits in various applications, according to Kumar, cost, standards and privacy are some of the biggest challenges hampering its spread.