To enhance the student experience, McMaster is implementing a One Card solution to seamlessly integrate several student and staff activities onto one ID card that can be virtual or physical. This initiative is part of the McMaster IT Strategic Plan to deliver seamless technology and experience and aligns with the institutional McMaster Strategy under Operational Excellence by creating streamlined services. 

With executive sponsorship from the chief financial officer, the scope of the One Card project over the next year or more is to integrate student and staff ancillary services in a phased approach onto one virtual or physical card. The integration of security access technologies will follow at a later date. 

Project background:  

The IT Strategic Plan endorsed and launched in 2018/19 identifies initiating McMaster’s One Card solution. In 2019, workshops were held by the chief technology officer focusing on potential scope inclusions for this project.  

In 2020, the Chief Financial Officer took on executive sponsorship of the Discovery Project phase, which included a series of functional and technical user group meetings covering services across McMaster that could be integrated with One Card. The IT Governance endorsed the Discovery Phase recommendation to launch the One Card project.

The One Card project scope, as defined below, is estimated at $1 million funded by Financial Affairs. Funding covers the implementation and systems integrations. However, the project does not include any access hardware replacement initiatives. This project aligns with the McMaster IT Strategic Plan, delivering seamless technology and experience. This also aligns with the institutional McMaster Strategy in Operational Excellence, creating streamlined services.

Project scope details:  

In-Scope:

The scope of the One Card project over the next year or more is to integrate student and staff ancillary services onto one virtual or physical card. The one card project aims to seamlessly integrate services where practical, economical, and controlled by McMaster. This means integrations that involve technology connections of McMaster controlled systems then the integration will be in-scope. 

Out of Scope: 

At a later date, McMaster will focus on the integration of security access technologies. Recognizing that McMaster students, faculty and staff operate both on and off campus across campus properties, leased premises, and affiliated hospitals, there are several access systems out of scope for this project. However, where certain access integrations involve physical infrastructure renovations the service integration will be deemed uneconomical and will be out of scope. 

The university recognizes the importance of adopting a One Card outlook, this means the future services and infrastructure will give a strong preference toward integration capability. Further, older infrastructure that is replaced over time associated with facilities renewal or new initiatives will also consider the cost/benefit of adding integrative hardware.

Current Phase and Next Steps:

Upon launching it in November 2021, McMaster University completed the “request for proposals” (RFP) process, to identify vendor solutions with proven experience and implementation support to roll-out the integration of services in phases. As a result, “TouchNet A Global Payments Company” was identified as the preferred vendor.  

The cloud migration kicked off on September 12, 2022, with target delivery of end of December 2022. 

The current focus is on working with TouchNet to document the statement of work. The teams are developing a project roadmap, implementation timeline, and identifying resources and priorities. Also, a communication plan is underway to actively engage all stakeholders. 

The next steps are (1) identifying a roadmap that is prioritized and confirmed with each stakeholder, (2) detailing implementation plan and (3) identifying required resources.

Town Hall meeting are held on a regular basis to share the latest updates. Watch recordings of previous town hall meetings here.