australia access card

btw referring to WBC I meant credit/debit for ERG's transit systems.

Regarding the $1billion Access card already a company from New Zealand has advised the govt that ERG is unsuited to provide this system. It is early days yet but I remained convinced ERG, at the very least, will play a role indirectly. BUT it would not surprise me if ERG mounts a strong case to the contrary, lets hope so.
Interesting to note 'Development Systems Ltd' reference to the failed system in Sydney. Seems to me they are shooting from the hip. But reading between the lines ERG appears to be a 'serious' contender.

The reasons the DSL has disputed ERG's suitability are as follows;

Submission to the Access Card Consumer and Privacy Taskforce

The private sector has a chequered history in the Australian smart card segment. The ERG Group (ERG) failure to introduce a smart card system for the New South Wales transportation system has probably cast some doubt amongst officials regarding the private sector’s capabilities in the identification field. However, the real lesson from ERG is not the issue of private versus public sector, but instead of technology scaling. ERG made the common mistake of attempting to scale small systems to large size without being fully cognisant of the exponentially increasing risks inherent in orthodox technology. In fact, the SCRS runs the same risks as ERG, in attempting to scale up systems to widespread implementation without considering the risks inherent in this process. The failure of both ERG and the Taskforce to directly address this issue has led us to the conclusion that the access card project is an expensive failure in the making. We are astounded that the Australian Government would consider throwing A$1 billion away in such a cavalier fashion. The Australian Government is probably unaware that there is no single successful petabyte scale database system in the world. The US Government and Microsoft have been attempting a petabyte scale system since 1999, but have met with continuing failure. The scaling problem is real and the SCRS is sufficiently large that there will be scaling effects at work. The Development Group is the only organisation available with the technology for a database system capable of supplying identification services for a potential twenty million people. We have developed, over the past twenty years, the technology specifically to overcome the scaling issue. We already have Australasia’s most capable database system in testing in our research anddevelopment centre in New Zealand, and we will populate this database to multiple petabyte scale during the second half of 2006. We know that the current Australian Government direction is going to run into the sorts of problems we overcame over a decade ago. The Australian Government can either take advantage of this capability or continue to follow the orthodox route with the high risk of a very public failure. In our case, we intend to introduce identification verification services into Australia within the same2008-2010 window as the access card, and we foresee an unnecessary wastage on the part of the Australian Government. We believe it is beneficial for the Australian Government to leverage off our capabilities, but it is up to the Australian Government to waste public money, not us.


Development Systems Limited, July 2006Conclusion We offer the Australian Government the opportunity to embark on the future of identification services today. We offer the Australian Government the choice of being a country with leading edge capabilities rather than becoming a second tier country following international trends, with so-called ‘proven’ technology. You will appreciate that the more sensitive elements of our capabilities cannot be published in this potentially publicly accessible document for security reasons. If you would like to discuss this issue further, then we would welcome discussions. Otherwise, just watch and wait, because the future has a habit of becoming tomorrow’s today.

How do you like that "so called proven technology". Like the Australian Cricket team with the "so called winning strategy".

This one is going to play out for some time but very pleasing to note that ERG has targetted.

again just watch this space folks.

cheers,
walt.