1. Moving Towards a Digital University
2. Emerging IT Industry Trend and Adoption of Open Standards
3. Proposed IT development in 1997-2000
3.1 Network
3.1.1 Urgent Need for Higher Bandwidth to Internet
3.1.2 Need to Replace all the Old Network Cabling Infrastructure
3.1.3 The Need for Network Infrastructure for the Student Hostels
3.1.4 The implementation of ATM WAN links to Remote Buildings
3.1.5 Roaming Network and Virtual LANs
3.1.6 Setting up of 100 Mbps Connections to the Desktop
3.2.1 PC Provision for Staff
3.2.2 PC Provision for Students
3.3 Moving towards a Paperless Environment in a Digital University
3.3.1 Greater Use of Electronic Mail
3.3.2 Greater Use of the World-Wide-Web
3.3.3 Electronic Archival of Information
3.3.4 Office Automation
3.3.5 Use of Electronic Forms Technology
3.3.6 Development of Electronic Workflow
3.4 Administrative Applications
3.4.1 Provision of On-Line Transaction Systems
3.4.2 Provision of Management Information
3.4.3 Executive Information Systems
3.5.1 Abundant and Convenient Access to Campus Network
3.5.2 Electronic Distribution and Access to all Information
3.5.3 Student-Centric Learning Environment
3.5.4 Provision of High Performance / Parallel Computers
3.6.1 Interactive Multimedia Information Kiosk
3.6.2 Use of HKU Electronic ID Card
A Proposal for implementing the vision of "Moving Towards a Digital University in the Year 2000" is presented.
The University of Hong Kong has hitherto built a firm foundation of a modern and sophisticated campus network infrastructure. It is proposed that we should capitalize on our current provisions to move towards the vision of the development of a "Digital University" by the turn of the century in Year 2000.
A new culture should be established to adopt the extensive use of Information Technology in the various facets of life in the University, which includes teaching, learning research and administration. It would help our initiative in re-engineering our many activities with an overall target of increased productivity with quality output.
The basic IT provision to staff and students must be set at a suitable standard in order to achieve this mission. Continuous enhancement to our network and servers, desktop PC provision, abundant and efficient access to the campus network, new development in our administrative and academic applications, office and workflow automation, improved amenity services are essential to the successful implementation of this vision.
A firm commitment from top management and senior administrators is necessary to make this proposal viable. The total investment will not be small. Extensive training is needed to build up this culture, a culture which we firmly believe will be vital to the well-being of the University in the next decade.
1. Moving Towards a Digital University
Over the past ten years, the Computer Centre has put in significant effort in building the University's campus network. There have been continuous upgrades to the network infrastructure and computer equipment as the technology took tremendous strides over these years. Our campus geography with many buildings on a hilly slope, our old buildings, our distributed campus, and the large number of new buildings that have been put up in the last five years have serious implications on the design and implementation of our campus network.
Nevertheless, we have built the foundations of a sophisticated campus network infrastructure with pretty good desktop PCs and server provisions. No doubt, continuous upgrade and extension are still inevitable over the next decade. The applications on the network are growing, but the pace is probably not as rapid as we may want it to be. Our University should capitalize on the current provisions to move towards the vision of the development of a "Digital" University as a matter of urgency. A new culture within the University should be established to adopt extensive use of IT into the various facets of our campus life.
The University is taking steps to re-engineer its many activities with an overall target to increase productivity, i.e. doing more with less. The challenge is to provide better quality, and at the same time be more flexible, efficient and responsive. Our following IT initiative proposal is developed with the above objectives in mind. It is imperative that the top University management and senior administration should play a leading role in taking up the IT initiative in this development. We firmly believe that it will be every University's need to move towards a Digital University in the future. We propose that our University should set our mission to become a "Digital University" by the turn of the century in Year 2000.
The Information Technology has progressed by leaps and bounds and it is expected to make even more significant changes in the next decade. IT will be the defining technology for new innovations in the future, and we have to be well prepared to meet this new wave of rapid changes which will revolutionize the methods of our teaching, learning, research and administration in the University.
The Computer Centre is prepared to take up the new challenges. Our Centre will continue to play its active role in assisting the University in her mission. We aim to provide the best quality IT services in Hong Kong and in the neighbouring region, with a sophisticated network that facilitates the access and exchange of information, the sharing of IT resources on the campus network to maximize cost-effectiveness, and to enable our staff and students to use our computer and network resource effectively and efficiently.
2. Emerging IT Industry Trend and Adoption of Open Standards
The IT industry has made tremendous progress in the last decade and it is anticipated that even more rapid development is forthcoming. It would be necessary to keep track of the latest leading-edge development if our University is to remain in the forefront of our peers. We should review our IT strategy and plan on a regular basis so that the technology can be transferred for deployment in the University at the earliest opportunity.
The rapidly-evolving IT industry would make it difficult for the University to catch up with the new development if our IT applications are locked into a proprietary standard. We proposed that industry Open Standards should be adopted in the University to allow for the most cost-effective acquisition of IT products. This may prove to be a difficult task in the liberal environment of a university, but the standardization on the use of desktop tools is of vital importance and is one target we should aim for. The use of a standard and common set of tools will allow for the ease of communication, information interchange and the sharing of data.
It is recommended that our University should promote the use of IT on a much wider scale for our teaching, learning, research and administration. Our University has already built a firm foundation in its network and servers. More IT applications for our various activities should be developed. The Computer Centre will continue to pursue a pro-active role to support new IT development. The University faculties and administration should also play a leading role in this promotion of the use of technology.
Other than the adoption of open standards for the IT provision in network, server, communication and database technologies, the University should also adopt industry open standards in our development of our "Digital University" environment. This include such areas as the adoption of Intranet technologies as the human-machine interface in the desktop utilities; electronic mail and messaging; bulletin board services; group calendaring and scheduling; electronic meeting systems with post-meeting workflows; electronic document management; project management control and sharing of resources; desktop video and data conferencing; and workflow management systems for business process re-engineering. Various standards will have to be developed for the teaching and learning environment, as well as in the administrative processes.
3. Proposed IT Development in 1997-2000
To successfully move into a Digital University environment, we need to build on our current network and IT provisions and be determined to put in even greater effort to enhance our network and servers, improve our PC provisions to staff and students, promote greater use of electronic media for our work, continue with new developments in our administrative applications, employ the latest IT technology for academic staff and students' learning, teaching and research, and provide innovation in our office automation and amenity services.
A state-of-the-art campus network with fast and efficient connectivity is vital to the successful implementation of our proposal of "Moving towards a Digital University in Year 2000". These include the network infrastructure of our internal campus network, as well as the external connection to the Internet, both to Hong Kong locally and elsewhere overseas.
3.1.1 The Urgent Need for Higher Bandwidth to Internet
The current Internet connection is a T1 (1.544 Mbps) circuit connecting to USA, which is scheduled to be upgraded to E1 (2.048 Mbps) by January 1997. The circuit is shared by eight tertiary institutions (including the Hong Kong Institute of Education). The total number of staff and students accessing this link could very well be close to 80,000. The rental cost of the T1 circuit itself is around $6 million per year, while that of the E1 circuit is $7 million a year. Currently the funding is largely provided by a UGC/RGC grant of $18 million awarded to JUCC, and the excess cost being shared by the JUCC institutions. The grant will be used up by the summer of 1998, and our University should be prepared for supporting this funding from then onwards.
However, even before this funding is used up, the usage of this shared line has been exponentially increasing since its implementation a year ago, due to the popularity of the Internet. The current response on the Internet access is very slow throughout the day (very often less than 100 bytes per sec), and most of the nights too. Although the Computer Centre has put in measures to improve the efficiency in the usage of this bandwidth, such as the implementation of powerful web servers and proxy servers, the shared use among the institutions makes it difficult to provide an efficient use of the bandwidth.
It is of vital importance that the University should have access to much higher bandwidth to Internet, so that some essential jobs of our staff and students could be done more efficiently. We have reached a crisis level where some important access to the Internet is not getting through, e.g. using the Internet for teaching in a classroom. The additional bandwidth can be obtained by getting additional leased circuits or by subscribing to a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP). It is envisaged that we could start with a bandwidth of 256Kbps (@HK$2 million/yr) or 512 Kbps (@HK$4 million/yr) per year, rising to T1 (@HK 6 million/yr) speed by the end of 1988-2001 triennium. For this provision, presumably the University should bear the major part of the cost, but departments should also be charged for the use of this better provision. However, it is important that the cost to the departments should be set at a rate lower than commercial ISPs.
3.1.2 The Need to Replace all Old Network Cabling Infrastructure
Our University campus network was started back in 1987. For the past decade, the network technology has progressed a lot. While we have been upgrading the cabling infrastructure throughout the years to catch up with the new technology, some of the buildings are still using the old thin-wire Ethernet connection. It is necessary to improve the old cabling infra-structure in all these buildings to provide for better reliability and higher bandwidth, in order to provide every department in the University with the basic environment to build up the foundation to realize the vision in this proposal. All the backbone network should be connected by fibre-optic cables, with UTP connections to the desktop computers. ATM network nodes should be installed at all major buildings.
It is our viewpoint that this upgrade should be completed within the next two years for all the University buildings. The Computer Centre has started this initiative through the Computer Committee. The total cost for this infrastructure upgrade is however estimated to be around HK$10 million, while it is only possible to allocate about $3 million each year for all the network-related work from the Computer Committee. It is hoped that additional funding could be provided in the current year and the next to speed up this upgrade. There will not be any recurrent expenditure on the cabling infrastructure, but it is necessary to provide sufficient recurrent cost for the network equipment and any further unforseen cabling technology upgrades.
3.1.3 The Need for Network Infrastructure for the Student Hostels
The students are now relying more and more on the access to network and computers for their learning and research. Our University is perhaps the only University that currently does not provide any networking facility to the rooms of student halls. Our University also suffers from the difficulties of having a spread-out campus separated by public roads and land, which does not provide us with any easy means of building the network connectivity among the remote buildings and the student halls.
We have proposed in the past two years that all rooms in student hostels be wired up for direct connection to the campus network within the hall and connected by WAN links (possibly ATM links through the telephone companies). The cost for building this infrastructure is around $10 million, on the basis of one connection per student (ie one for a single room and two for a double room etc). The ATM connections from HK Telecom currently cost about $400,000 per year (for two ends of 10M bits). Some of the cost for building this infrastructure could presumably be recovered from any student who needs a direct network connection. Again, the cost to students, if any, should be set at a rate which is lowered than the commercial ISPs.
An alternative approach, which is cheaper, would be to provide a common PC area in each hostel, which would require additional space dedicated for this purpose. Suitable WAN connection is however still necessary in this scenario. We have already started this approach in the medical halls in Sassoon Road, with some funding acquired from the Computer Committee. Still another approach is to provide a large number of telephone lines in the hostels and sufficient modems in the Computer Centre so that students could access the network through PPP connections. We have also investigated into the use of wireless LAN connections. However it does not yet seem to be a good economical solution.
3.1.4 The Implementation of ATM WAN Links to Remote Buildings
Not only does our University have old buildings, many of our buildings, which include academic buildings in the Medical and Dental Faculty, Sport Centre, Student Halls and Staff quarters are remote and dispersed. Again, these buildings need to be linked up, as in the case of student hostels as described in Section 3 above, either by WAN links through the telephone company's ATM offerings or deployment of massive PPP provisions. The Computer Centre has started some negotiation with the HK Telecom to see if any cheaper means is possible, since the recurrent cost for all these connections is very high indeed.
3.1.5 Roaming Network and Virtual LANs
Virtual LANs deployment is proposed for all the networks in the campus, which will facilitate roaming students and use in classrooms. This could also have the advantage of allowing the setting up of network connections throughout the campus, so that staff and students do not have to affix their computers. Dynamic IP address will be allocated and portable PCs could be supported. This would require the setting up of appropriate ATM nodes throughout the campus; this is also possible if the connectivity to the remote campuses and buildings and of sufficient bandwidth.
The cost of setting up of ATM nodes in all the major buildings is estimated to be around $10 million. Wireless LAN connections for buildings within line of sight are being tested by the Computer Centre. We shall also experiment with the use of Network Computers (NCs), which will require more powerful servers and even higher bandwidth networks. These technologies are not yet mature or economical, but could have some important implications in our future network development.
3.1.6 Setting up of 100 Mbps Connections to the Desktop
It is our proposal that by Year 2000, all the campus network connections to the desktop PCs should be upgraded to at least 100 Mbps, in order to provide sufficient network bandwidth for all our staff and users. This will be especially important for the future development of student-centred learning environment incorporating the use of multimedia teaching and learning. The current feasible technology to be deployed is Fast Ethernet (100Mbps), but the technology is still moving rapidly, so it would be necessary for the Computer Centre to continuously monitor the development to determine the most suitable strategy for deployment. It will also be necessary to put up similar connection points for students throughout the campus, whether it is in the Computer Centre, Library, departmental areas, classrooms, laboratories, meeting rooms etc.
It is proposed that our standard PC of choice should be based on the IBM PC standard, currently the Intel Pentium-based technology. Other platforms such as the Macintosh and UNIX workstations should also be supported where feasible and economical to do so.
3.2.1 PC Provision for Staff
Provision for TOS I teachers and non-teachers: Every TOS I staff should be provided with a minimum standard PC. This is already a provision by the Computer Committee. Considering the current pace of PC and network advancement in the industry, it is proposed that the PC provision should be renewed once every three years, on a matching fund basis, with the Computer Committee providing two-third of the cost of replacement and the remaining one-third on matching basis from the department. Assuming a unit cost of a standard PC to be around $12,000, the total funding required is estimated to be about $2.33 million per year.
Provision for staff on TOS II: It is proposed that all staff on TOS II which has need for a PC should be provided with a minimum standard PC as well, so that they can also participate actively in our future "Digital University". Currently the central provision is only a PC for each department office. All the other provision within the office are the responsibility of the departments. It is proposed to improve this provision, to provide more incentives to the departments, with the Computer Committee providing one-third of the cost of replacement and the remaining two-third on a matching basis from the department. The estimated cost for this provision is estimated to be around $2.33 million per year as well.
3.2.2 PC Provision for Students
A recent survey on PC provision indicates that the overall average PC:student ratio in our campus is about 1:7. This should be considered to be a good provision among universities. However, the current provision is rather skewed to the Faculty of Engineering. Student in most other faculties are not sufficiently provided and many of them depends on the central provision. The central provision by the Computer Centre, with a PC:student ratio of 1:25, is however insufficient to meet the heavy demand from students. This can be seen from the queues waiting for the use of PCs which often develop during the day time, and very often well into in the nights and weekends as well.
It is proposed that the central PC:student ratio should be improved to 1:10. This would required the setting up of an additional 500 PCs at an estimated cost of $6 million. The University should provided for more space, which could be in the Computer Center or in the Faculties, for setting up more open access areas where students can use it any time of the day. When the Virtual LAN technology can be deployed in the University and students could purchase their own PCs, it would also be possible to have more access points set up throughout the campus for easy access to the network without having them all concentrated on the centrally provided areas. Similar to provisions to staff, the student PCs should also be renewed once every three years.
The University could perhaps ask students to acquire their own PCs, with subsidy from the University. With sufficient network access points and a roaming network, this is a feasible approach. But with the technology changing rapidly, the students could find the need to upgrade every year in order to catch up with the technology. Some state-of-the-art PC provisions should still be provided by the University to overcome this problem.
3.3 Moving towards a Paperless Environment in a Digital University
With suitable network infrastructure and technology, digital communication based on information technology should be employed to replace the traditional use of paper in our daily work, whether it should be internal memo, official notice to staff and students, or even submission of assignment by students and the comments and corrections by teachers, etc. It would be necessary to empower all our staff and students with the capability to use the PCs and the network, and turn this into a new culture in the University. Some standards in this mode of communication should be set up for uniform adoption throughout the campus in order to achieve good compatibility and efficiency.
3.3.1 Greater Use of Electronic Mail for Communication
This should be taken as the standard means of communication, superseding the use of regular paper mail, for notices to staff and students, departments and faculties, etc. The University administration should take the lead to use this modern means of communication. Encryption technology will be employed to ensure security of information transmitted. Authentication of messages will also be performed.
Teachers and students should be encouraged to use this new media for their communications. The Computer Centre will work out, with assistance of the administration, suitable mailing lists to facilitate this process. It is also necessary to establish suitable guidelines and statement of computer ethics in the University so that our staff and students will be using this media in the most effective manner and nobody will be flooded with junk mail. Our electronic mail server capability will have to be upgraded appropriately to provide for enough processing power and storage capacity.
3.3.2 Greater Use of the World-Wide-Web
The Internet and WWW has become the most popular means of digital communication over the network. All our University information should be made available on our Intranet, and our access to the WWW for information elsewhere should also be appropriately enabled to allow for adequate response. Again the administration should be asked to take the lead in greater use of the WWW for information dissemination for Internet and Intranet applications. The Computer Centre will provide assistance to provide the necessary technology support and consultancy to the University-wide community. We have assisted the Registry in some of these projects, eg. in undergraduate prospectus, research publications. Further extension to other areas should be encouraged.
3.3.3 Electronic Archival of Information
With the vast amount of documents and information to be handled, an effective document management system (DMS) is more critical than ever. One essential step is to convert all the current documents to electronic media, incorporating effective and efficient indexing for storage and retrieval. This is a chore but cannot be avoided. The DMS must also provide for security protection over the information, so that unauthorized personnel would not be able to edit the document stored.
The Computer Center is testing means of electronic archival of information using good search software and CD-ROM technology. Multi-media information can be archived and retrieved with digital library technology, providing easy means of access to information. It will also serve the purpose of electronic filing.
3.3.4 Office Automation
A standard should be set for the use of an office-automation software, eg Novell Groupwise or Lotus Notes, throughout the campus. This will provide the necessary means of moving towards digital offices throughout the University. Means of using electronic calendars for efficient scheduling of meetings, availability of meeting rooms etc. will be very helpful for achieving our goal of moving toward paperless offices and a Digital University.
3.3.5 Use of Electronic Forms Technology
To allow for efficient means of data collection, online electronic forms technology should be widely employed wherever possible. Presumably the Intranet WWW technology could be used. The Computer Centre has piloted several electronic forms very successfully and our staff are trained with the necessary skills to do it on a large scale to convert all our data capture to be done at source based on the Web technology. Students can input their data directly and request for any change in data via the network. Similarly, staff could also enquire about their personal information and other related to their work. These provisions would also answer the issues raised by the data privacy act recently in force.
3.3.6 Development of Electronic Workflow
Together with the forms technology, electronic workflow is to be employed to replace the current paper flow through the internal mail system. The forms will be passed electronically over the network to the next person in authority for their endorsement, comments or otherwise. Authentication techniques will be suitably employed and issues on security will need to be resolved.
3.4 Administrative Applications
With the completion of converting of all our legacy administrative system to the current relational database system, the Computer Centre is now in a much better position to provide department heads and administrators with quality information that are reliable, available, accessible, timely and relevant. However, much work still need to be done, on improvement of the operational systems and on the management information systems.
3.4.1 Provision of On-line Transaction Systems
There are still a large number of batch-oriented systems. Some of the these, e.g. the purchasing system and the related ledger, debtor systems etc, will require substantial rewrite or the purchase of off-the-shelf packages. Some re-engineering work in necessary for us to move onto the real-time online transaction mode. But it is even more important to be able capture all data online and at source, if our information systems are to be timely and reliable. All our operational systems must be tightly integrated to provide for an efficient database of University information.
3.4.2 Provision of Management Information
We have taken a big step in the provision of good management information with the introduction of the University Information System. It has received some good response from the end users, but it is obvious that further improvement is necessary. In some cases, the data needs cleaning up while in other situation, additional information need to be captured. With the increasing popularity of the WWW technology, an effort is also being made to provide such information to administrators and department over the web using Intranet technology.
Structured data is information that has been captured and stored in the University's integrated administrative databases. In order to make these data useful to management, information from various operational applications would be collected and aggregated, based on management requirements, to form an on-line analytical processing system (OLAP) or an executive information system (EIS).
3.4.3 Executive Information Systems
To assist the University administration and departmental budget holders in their planning activities, it is proposed that an Executive Information System (EIS) be set up to provide them with the necessary management information for budget planning and forecasting. It should be closely tied to the University Information System which serves to feed the relevant information, eg budgets, student numbers, space information, to the EIS. The system should be connected to the campus network and provide an easy-to-use interface to facilitate access by users. Modelling tools should be available in the system. The Computer Centre and the administration should work very closely for the successful implementation of an EIS system.
In order for users to maximize the potential benefits of the information from
an OLAP or EIS, and to add value to the information to create new information,
we must also be able to provide an integrated environment on the desktop, so
that information can be freely manipulated in a shared environment. These are
usually desktop productivity tools like word processors and spreadsheets, which
allow the end users to perform more complex analysis at a personal level.
It is important that teachers should take the need to foster the new digital teaching and learning environment. Appropriate training should be given to teachers and their assistants so that they could demonstrate to the students of the new environment and encourage their use.
3.5.1 Abundant and Convenient Access to Campus Network
The University should provide sufficient PCs and access points so that all teachers and students can access the campus network without having to queue up for access. This is the only means to provide a truly "Digital University" environment.
Provision of portable computers or network computers with roaming network access will help to provide this working environment. Convenient locations in the numerous building within the University should be set up with access points where staff and students can plug in their portable PCs and access the network. Not only should the academic buildings be wired up in this manner, amenity centres and student halls etc should also be similarly provided. Sufficient dial-up access for students not living in halls would also be required.
3.5.2 Electronic Distribution and Access to all Information
It is proposed to widely deploy video on demand and multimedia WWW technologies over a fast campus network infrastructure for academic uses. With the deployment of more multimedia course material and the provision of more access points for the students, they can view the course material at their convenience for self-learning or revision purposes. Appropriate software will be developed for providing a suitable environment for viewing those multimedia material easily.
Also, students should be able to enquire all information on the network. This should include course information, time-table of classes, examination time table, etc. They could also enquire their own information which include examination results and transcripts, with appropriate authentication.
Faculties and departments should use the WWW to disseminate information. Courses should be organized to introduce the latest WWW technologies, and assistance service should be set up to help in disseminating various departmental information. This includes putting up course notes and assignment in electronic form, and broadcasting of university information over the network.
The course management for distribution of course material, receiving and returning course assignment, recording the grades should be done online. All these aim to free the instructors from the clerical chore so as to have more time to interact with the students in a student-centred learning environment.
3.5.3 Student-Centric Learning Environment
With the availability of more and more computer-assisted learning courseware and the accessibility to the World-Wide-Web in the form of an electronic encyclopedia, the learning mode of students is vastly different from the previous face-to-face mode of teaching and learning. The University should also set up a student-centric learning environment within the University where the students can interact with the teachers or their own peers through electronic means. When students have questions while browsing over the web or engaged in the studying of a courseware, not only should they be able to call up other information for reference from the network, they should be also able to call up their teachers or student peers, for questions and discussions, right on the spot.
Video-conferencing over the network should be provided at various access points so that student-teacher and student-student interaction will be made easy and independent of distance. This will help the student-centric mode of learning as well as distance learning.
3.5.4 Provision of High Performance / Parallel Computers
The University has acquired a parallel supercomputer, the IBM SP2 with 32 RS6000 nodes and a high performance switch. While it has taken the University almost three years to cultivate the use of parallel programming, a large number of staff and students (over 100) are now attracted to the use of this facility for their research work, and for teaching in the computer discipline. Many are beginning to produce interesting results and publications. We have built up a strength in this area and it is a facility that attracts quality staff and research students. We envisioned that there will be much more applications and use of the parallel computing resources. Further enhancement in this very important and significant resource of the University will be beneficial for our many faculties and departments as they strive to build up their area of excellence.
3.6.1 Interactive Multimedia Information Kiosk
It is always not an easy task for visitors or new staff and students to move around a large campus. Convenient direction guides throughout the campus is needed to accomplish this task. For our Digital University vision, we propose to install interactive multimedia information kiosks at prominent locations over the campus so that visitors and students can enquire for information about the University easily. A PC equipped with a touch screen, a small camcorder with microphone and a high speed network connection will form the basic set up of a kiosk.
The kiosks will be networked together, with access to up-to-date information in the centralized databases. Besides the usual information about the statistics of the University, class schedule, events of the day, route plans to various places of the University, etc., can be shown graphically to the user. Audio and video on demand technology will be employed so that the user can view live multimedia information. If necessary, the user can interact, through a video conferencing connection, with, say, a telephone operator or a guard of the University to seek further information.
3.6.2 Extended Use of Multi-purpose Electronic ID Card
Our University has been issuing an electronic ID card for new students since 1995. By the fall of 1997, all students would have been issued the electronic ID card. It is planned that staff will also be issued similar cards within the next year as well. More extended use of card within the campus is thus possible.
This card is currently a magnetic card. It has the advantage of being a mature and in-expensive product. A more ambitious approach would be using a smart card. It is more expensive to implement and the technology is less mature. But it can be used as a cash card, and we should link its use with a bank as a partner. It will also serve as portable storage for each individual's personal information, e.g. student transcript information.
The following usage of the electronic ID card can be identified:
(i) Physical Access Security
This application would serve as one of the primary uses of the electronic ID card. It is most desirable if this system operates in an online mode for the checking of access rights. However, offline mode would be used for locations where connection to the campus network is not yet feasible. The ID card will allow its holder with access rights to enter various locations in the University including the Computer Centre, Libraries, Sports Centre, residential hostels, car parks, department offices, laboratories, etc. It will not only serve as an ID check for security purposes, but will also provide information on the utilization of these facilities to help future planning purposes.
(ii) Computer Access Security
With special self-service computer terminals installed, the electronic ID could be used for authentication in allowing staff and students to access private information and to update important information onto our databases. This could range from change of personal information of staff and students which could be addresses or telephone numbers or to update their records such as course selection for students. A possible extension is to allow department heads to use their HKU ID card to provide an electronic digital signature which can be used instead of their hand-written signature to approve requisition orders or other types of documents.
(iii) Electronic Money
The electronic ID card can be used as a stored value card where a pre-fixed value can be loaded onto the card which is then used to pay for sports services, to settle photocopying charges, to make purchases at vending machines, etc, within the campus. With the recent debut of "smart cards" by commercial banks, HKU can make commercial arrangements with banks to facilitate the use of the new HKU ID cards as stored value cards outside the campus as well.
(iv) Portable Files
The smart card can also serve the purpose of keeping some personal
information pertaining to each staff or student. This could be simple
information as name and address, or it could be transcript information of
students, ready to be printed any time it is needed.