September 28, 2006
Bye-bye sticker: Husky Card is getting smart
By Marty Perlman
Housing & Food Services
Your Husky Card. You carry it with you every day. And depending on the number of years you’ve been at the University, your card may be showing a bit of wear and tear. There is one part of your card, however, that gets a clean start each October when the new validation sticker for the new school year is sent your way. But that’s about to change. This October, employees will not be receiving that updated validation sticker. It is being phased out as part of a larger plan to modernize and replace all Husky ID Cards over the next 12 to 16 months.
The change was precipitated by a regional transportation decision when seven local public transportation agencies (Community Transit, Everett Transit, King Country Metro Transit, Kitsap Transit, Pierce Transit, Sound Transit and Washington State Ferries) joined together to work on a project called ORCA (One Regional Card for All). The idea is to use a new electronic fare system — the smart card. It’s a plastic card containing an embedded microchip processor that can keep track of fare transactions. The card uses a new technology, so that a user only needs to bring it within a few inches of a reader for the transaction to work. (In the future, you’ll say goodbye to the UPASS sticker as well.)
The adoption of the smart card for public transportation created the opportunity for the University to consider new ID card options. Over the past several years, the Husky Card Advisory Committee, a group made up of members from the three campuses, met to discuss the ID card’s future. “With the phasing out of the UPASS sticker for transit users, and the use of new card-reading technologies, the committee realized that having one University ID card with multiple capacities was the direction to go,” said Sherry Ochsner, Husky Card account manager. “The timing is right to overhaul our current ID and incorporate the smart card into a new ID,” added Ochsner, “thus eliminating the need to carry different cards.”
Over the past year, the project — involving C&C, Transportation Services, Housing and Food Services, and the administration — began to take shape. It will be no small order to recard the University’s entire population, both students and employees. The first step employees will experience is the absence of the annual validation sticker. From now until the old cards are turned in for the new ones, an employee’s existing card will be valid.
The second visible change will occur in January 2007 when new employees and those who have lost cards go to the Husky Card Office for employee ID card production rather than going online or going to their payroll coordinator. About the same time, the University Libraries will cease using the ID card bar code and will use the magnetic stripe instead. In spring 2007, students and employees will be asked to participate in selecting the card’s new look. And depending on how soon the regional transportation group is ready to make use of smart cards, recarding at the University to replace the current card technology with the smart card could begin in the summer or fall of 2007.
The newly designed picture ID cards will no longer include a validation sticker or UPASS strip but will continue to have the magnetic stripe, so all services that use the mag stripe (such as CAAMS door access, library check-out, Husky Card account, etc.) will not be impacted. For UPASS participants, the card’s chip can be activated.
“The smart card will make it easier for employees and students to get access to transit as the U-PASS sticker will be replaced with an electronic fare media,” said Peter Dewey, acting director of Transportation Services.
For transit users, the current UPASS sticker will still work until the ORCA program goes into effect, sometime in the fall of 2007 or winter of 2008. Employee Husky Cards with non-renewed validation stickers will also continue to be usable. When the time comes for the changeover to the new smart card for the UPASS, employees will be notified to come to the Husky Card Office obtain a new (picture) ID card. During the year, students and employees will be kept up to date on how the changes are coming via articles in University publications and on the HFS Web site at http://hfs.washington.edu/husky_card/.
