April 2005
Oman is set to usher in a revolution with smart cards

Soon opening a bank account, or for that matter paying utility bills, could be a cinch for citizens and expatriates in Oman. The first smart card application for the masses will be rolled out in just about three to six months making it one of the very few countries in the region to have adopted such technology. Oman was the first country in the Middle East to adopt smart cards for a national identity and residency status system.

Bahwan IT, a Suhail Bahwan Group company, is partnering with the Royal Oman Police (ROP) to port a host of citizen services onto the national ID and residency cards given out by the Director General of Civil Status.

"We are in talks with almost all the banks," says R Shyam Sundar, senior manager at Bahwan IT. While some of the banks are looking to kick off with the simplification of the account opening process for customers, more complex banking functions could be brought onto the platform with the integration of their back-end functioning in due course.

More significantly, the Muscat Municipality is all set to start smart card applications for delivering better citizen services. It is also looking at introducing smart card based e-cash applications to enable citizens and others to pay their licence fees and other citizen service charges. "Technically everything is ready and we will be launching services soon," says Yaqoob Dur al Balushi, director general, Muscat Municipality.

The possibilities are immense. Intended to be the ubiquitous form of mass media that can be used for identification and authentication, the Director General of Civil Status has already given out several thousands of these smart cards that will be issued to every citizen and expatriate.

Anything from a driver's licence to the user's health record and digital signatures to a bankcard can be loaded onto the smart card that has a memory of 32kb. It already consists the individual's demographic data such as marriage record, birth and other personal details, along with a digital photograph and an electronic fingerprint template, making identification, verification and authentication possible by manual and machine readable forms. ROP is now expected to free up some more space on the card to enable programming of other service applications on it.

Data entry is the most tedious job in any IT environment, particularly where it involves citizen services. "Enabling smart card applications would result in drastic savings in time," says Balushi, adding that ultimately the smart card should become as ubiquitous as the bank ATM card. Apart from the smart card applications, the Muscat Municipality is also ready with wireless e-payment solutions for services such as parking fees and fines.

It is signing up with Oman Mobile to enable the solution for payment of user charges through SMS.

Oman is set for some latest technologies in the coming days that should make life a lot easier for people in general.

All in a card

Some of the most common smart card applications

  • Credit cards

  • Electronic cash

  • Computer security

  • Wireless communication

  • Loyalty systems such as frequent flyer points

  • Banking

C Chitti Pantulu

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