By Heather Danforth
After years of preparation, a more durable and secure BYU identification card is on its way.
But when the new cards actually get in the hands of students and faculty is still unknown.
A randomly computer generated number will replace the social security number as the BYU ID on the new Signature Cards, said Craig Schow, manager of BYU''s Signature Card system.
'The Number 1 reason for the new card is to get rid of that dang social security number,' said Randy Britsch, project manager in the Office of Information Technology.
The number change is only one reason for the new cards. BYU officials want a card that would last longer.
'Students use them a whole lot more than they used to, and they''re simply wearing out,' Schow said.
Emblazoned with BYU''s logo, the new Signature Card will be more authentic and genuinely BYU-related - rather than a cookie-cutter version that could fit any school. And there will be no visible distinction between the cards issued to faculty, staff and students.
The new cards will be more difficult to replicate as well, due to a protective seal on them with a hologram of the BYU emblem.
The new card''s design should clarify the purpose of a Signature Card, Schow said.
'I think there''s a lot of people that don''t understand what its intent is,' Schow said. 'Its intent is to say that BYU knows me, this is my image that BYU knows me by, and if you key in this number, you''ll get information about me.'
The card is not intended to separate students from staff or faculty, or to make visible a cardholder''s entitlements, such as specific classes, discounts at the BYU Bookstore, or longer checkout periods at the Harold B. Lee Library.
Those perks can still be determined with the new card, however, by swiping the magnetic stripe on its reverse side. This will bring up a person''s roles - such as student, staff, or faculty - and entitlement information in the BYU database.
'You can belong to different roles at the same time,' Schow said. 'You can change your entitlements simply by going to a lot of user applications and adding classes and deleting classes. So trying to print roles and entitlements visibly on the card was a futile effort. It simply didn''t work.'
The most difficult part of converting from the university''s current ID cards to new ones is the complicated process of preparing BYU''s service systems to accept a new number as a student identifier, rather than the social security number. This process has taken years, Schow said.
He said he believes most of the major systems have been corrected, so when the new cards come out they''ll be operational everywhere on campus.
'We don''t want to start issuing these cards and find out that you can''t go to the Testing Center, you can''t go to the library, you can''t go to Blackboard, you can''t go to these things,' Schow said. 'That''s what''s taking the time - to make sure all of those systems work.'
The card''s designers say they are pleased with the final product.
'If we didn''t think it was a good product and we were ready to go, we wouldn''t be pushing it,' Schow said.
Once students have been issued a new Signature Card, they will be able to look up that card online through their Route Y login. Under the heading 'update personal information,' two new screens will be available to cardholders, Schow said. One of the screens will show the card itself, and the other will show all roles and entitlement information. This screen will be used by services across campus to determine a person''s correct entitlements.
The cards have been issued to about 200 students so far, including a test group, Britsch said.
When campus-wide distribution begins, the university will notify students and inform them about how they should go about getting the new card, Schow said.