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By Michael Hulme

In short the answer to this question is almost certainly yes, but very probably not in theway that many commentators, including the Government have foreseen.

The Teleconomy/Logica research 'How Smart are we on Smart Cards?' clearly demonstrated a broad acceptance for the concept of Smart Cards primarily based on ease of use issues. However the corollary to broad acceptancewas found to be increasing concern as issues of data aggregation, security and trust were considered. This dichotomy may lead to ideas of the 'multi-purpose/multi-accessØ card that underpin much Smart Card optimism, such as a ubiquitous Government services access card, failing to be realised. Indeed the Smart future may see a plethora of highly tactical and context specific uses with all that that may mean for our ever-bulging wallets.

That there are currently few instances of successful Smart Card proliferation endorses these findings. Stated simply if the introduction of new cards leads to debate regarding issues of purpose and access to information consumers will quickly lose any initial enthusiasm and become increasing sceptical and less likely to adopt. But one could argue how doe this explain the large numbers of Smart Cards already in circulation particularly as these are often related to financial services and financial information. Quite simply most of us are unaware that the 'gold chipØ in our card is Smart, only 20% of respondents thought they possessed a Smart card, although they were very aware of the 'gold chip' in their banking cards. This introduction by 'stealth' probably represents the best opportunity for us to become gradually familiar with the functionality and power of Smart technologies. Such a mode of introduction favours existing providers of cards over newer providers. Importantly it avoids the kind of debate that this or successive Governments will have to enter into to establish cards such as a National Identity card.

Our research demonstrates that many of the reasons for resistance lie deep rooted within consumer behaviours. As consumers we are deeply cynical and have only limited trust in any form of organisation holding (despite the emphasis on creating Brand trust) and accessing our personal data. Government was found to be slightly more trusted than commercial organisations but even here such trusted tended to be highly context driven where imparting information had a potentially direct and obvious benefit, for example providing health details to the NHS. Disclosure and access to information was throughout found to be highly 'compartmentalised' and context driven, one could say we would rather the 'right hand did not know what the left was doing'. When we do give out information we want to see a positive and tangible benefit, we are 'traders' and information is our currency. This 'tradingØ behaviour was found to be particularly strong in the under 25 age group.

To even begin to overcome these behaviours providers of Smart technologies will need to ensure they provide obvious, practical and highly tangible benefits combined with explicit security and ease of use that is at least comparable with the mode or service the technology replaces. Even then our behaviours may prove to be so deep rooted that the day of the multi-purpose card never arrives.

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