The rollout of Smartics is going smoothly, but the system has some way to go before it can be used to enable e-commerce
GOVERNMENTS AROUND the world have been considering smart ID cards for several years. A few governments in Asia, including Hong Kong's, are in the process of implementing them.
The Immigration Department started rolling out its Smart Identity Card System (Smartics) in June 2003 and expects to complete the process by 2007. The $3 billion system has created almost 3 million cards so far, and has won several awards for outstanding technology implementations along the way.
Dion Wiggins, vice-president and research director at Gartner Hong Kong, has been looking into smart cards for the past few years. He believes the time is about right for everything to come together to make the technology a success.
Initially, Mr Wiggins and the Gartner Group had serious reservations about how successful the project would be. The implementation leader was a business unit of PCCW with no background in smart card projects, and it appeared to the analysts that PCCW may have become involved in something it could not handle.
Now, however, Mr Wiggins believes the project is well on its way to success, even if there are areas that clearly could be improved. 'Although I was concerned in the early days, I must admit they have really delivered,' he said.
