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Friday, October 3rd Victoria, BC

"We have about six months to complete this project and your input at the beginning stage is critical," he began.

They were gathered at the hotel – Adam had reserved a large room and had catered in a wide variety of food that was laid out on linen covered tables, the length of one wall. He learned a long time ago that there was no bigger incentive for code-writers. As the programmers and analysts cycled back and forth between their tables and the food, Adam, casually munching from the plate in front of him, explained that he needed them to write and test the software requirements for the Island’s new SmartCard system.

He had prepared general specification booklets for them but they would read the material later, if at all. Eating and listening simultaneously was no difficulty.

"The Pedestals will need to image a person’s face, in colour, scan and digitise a thumbprint, then produce a SmartCard about the size of a credit card or driver’s license." Adam munched on a carrot. "The second part of the project, is the Reader. This will be the interface between the card – and the service provider. When a person puts their SmartCard in a Reader at a hospital, for example, the medical personnel at the computer would be able to access the medical records for that person. Which brings us to the third part of the project." He was at the long table now, filling his plate with brownies. "The programs need to do three things. First, since the SmartCard is universal, that means we need to make sure the medical people can’t access the person’s financial information, that the banks can’t access the person’s police records, and that the police can’t access anything." They stopped eating long enough to laugh; Adam liked making the joke. "Seriously, though, we need to…"

A woman shouted from the back "Hey, just give it to Duane, here. When he writes code, even HE can’t access it." That got a bigger laugh. ‘Programmers,’ thought Adam. ‘Gotta love ’em.’
"Okay, okay." He wondered if maybe less food would have been a better idea. "The next thing to look at is a scaled down version of the SmartCard for visitors to the island." Adam tread carefully here; these people would easily guess the endgame if too much was revealed. "This will function as a debit card – like it does for the residents – but there wont be other encrypted data files on the system for the visitors. We do want a small bit of memory connected to each one – that any SmartCard Reader could access – for non-vital information the visitor may want to put on the card. ‘In emergency contact so-and-so’ That kind of information, or pertinent medical information – like, diabetic." They got the idea. Adam knew that later, the non-vital information would also include length of stay – for the Island to track non-citizens.

Before they slipped into a food coma, Adam told them that after the programs were written, Tutorial CDs would need to be created for the pyramid of training staff that were already being assembled.