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RailCorp goes biometric for employees

RailCorp is planning to overhaul its time sheet and attendance system for employees, replacing the manual processes with biometric scanners to electronically capture what time staff clock in and out.
Written by Michael Lee, Contributor

RailCorp is planning to overhaul its time sheet and attendance system for employees, replacing the manual processes with biometric scanners to electronically capture what time staff clock in and out.

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(Points image by Vince Alongi, CC2.0)

The organisation currently requires staff to manually record their time at work on paper time sheets or attendance books, which can introduce errors in payments and is open to employees providing fake times.

When RailCorp rolls out the system in 2012, its team of over 14,000 employees will have their fingers scanned and converted into a mathematical algorithm. RailCorp has stated it will not store images of employee fingerprints.

The algorithm will be paired with an employee swipe card. Employees clocking on or off will need to present their card as well as have their finger scanned to verify they are the owner. This process is expected to ensure that employees can only use their own cards and that lost, stolen or borrowed cards cannot be used. It also ensures that employees cannot clock a co-worker in or out or falsify time sheets.

The organisation expects that the roll-out of the system will result in less red tape and offer more accurate payments for staff.

The project is going ahead despite the lack of a chief information officer for over two years and a number of IT-related outages including a recent network switch failure.

RailCorp general manager for finance and corporate services, Gary Pedersen, has been standing in as CIO after Vicki Coleman stood down over allegations of dishonest behaviour.

The NSW Government told ZDNet Australia that the delay around appointing a new chief information officer to RailCorp is due to ongoing plans to create an Integrated Transportation Authority for the state, which would see the rail agency swallowed up into a larger transportation bureaucracy.

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