The Penn State id+ Card Program has been selected in international
competition to become part of the Permanent Research Collection on Information
Technology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington,
D.C. and is now one of the five finalists in the category of Finance, Insurance
and Real Estate. Winners in each category will be announced June 7 at the
National Museum Building.
The Penn State id+ card, launched in 1998, serves as a bank ATM card, stored-value smart card and telephone calling card, packing innovative technologies into one card.
"What makes the program unique is its ability to offer cardholders a choice of financial institutions for the ATM bank card feature," said Wendy Buterbaugh, president of Pioneer Systems Inc., partner in the development of the card.
In order to give cardholders a choice of financial institutions, Pioneer Systems worked closely with Diebold Inc., to create a network that could not only process transactions from MAC and PLUS financial networks, but also one that could correlate the id+ card to its related financial institution and then authorize the transaction. It is the first of its kind and a major factor that distinguishes the Penn State id+ card from any other campus card.
For a description of the id+ card, go to http://www.thunderstone.com/texis/si/sc/innovate/results.html on the Web and follow the link to the Penn State Campus Card System or go to http://www.hfs.psu.edu/idcard/ on Penn State's Web site.
Case studies from the 1998 collection are available at http://innovate.si.edu/, the official Internet site of the Computerworld Smithsonian Program. Case studies of the overall 1999 winners will be posted June 7.