National Smart Card Project

The National Smart Card Project was concerned with the promotion of multi-application citizen smart card schemes run by local authorities in England. The Project began in 2003 and was funded in its early stages by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister through the National Projects part of the local e-Gov Programme. Bracknell Forest Borough Council took ownership and control of the project and its products, including the SmartConnect software, on 20 July 2005.

The National Smart Card Project website recorded the project outputs as at May 2004. These documents have now been archived but are available for viewing on this website (via the links on the left hand side of this page).

Up-to-date information with regard to smartcard standards may also be found on the LASSeO website: http://www.lasseo.org.uk

Up-to-date contacts and other links may also be found on the Smart Card Networking Forum website: http://www.scnf.org.uk

Outputs from all the National Projects can currently be viewed at the local e-gov National Projects Product Catalogue: www.productshare.org.uk

The National Smart Card Project’s software, SmartConnect, is a citizen registration database and card management system developed by local authorities for local authorities. Available through licence, SmartConnect provides a low-risk migration path from existing card solutions which provides a pathway to modernising services that can meet current and anticipated Government requirements. The software can register citizens and authenticate them, track data and record entitlements, issue cards - which can be smart, magnetic stripe or bar code - and store scanned documents. It is a configurable SQL server database, that runs on Windows 2000 or better, which also has smartcard printer drivers that allow electronic tokens to be produced following successful registration. There is the option to modify the printer drivers to allow compatibility with existing card scheme systems (such as magnetic stripe or bar code).


For more information about SmartConnect go to http://www.nationalsmartcardproject.org/background.aspx