AIDC (UK) Ltd is one of the leaders in independent compliance testing for smartcards and other AIDC technologies.

It launched its LASSeO (Local Authority Smartcards Standards e-Organisation) smartcard compliance tool June 2009 to great acclaim. This innovative software application has been originated by the developers at the AIDC European Centre of Excellence in Halifax. It is primarily designed to test and analyse LASSeO compliant applications within the NXP Mifare 4K card which is commonly issued by the local authorities. The tools helps card encoders, scheme operators and local authorities ensure compliance with the LASSeO specification, to ensure consistency of operation, as well as current and future interoperability between different schemes and suppliers.

The AIDC Centre team worked closely with LASSeO throughout the development of the compliance tool. For smartcards to be fully effective it is essential to define, implement and monitor interoperability standards across smartcard platforms, issuers, local services and environments. To help achieve this LASSeO has developed the smartcard mapping specification for the provision of local authority services on the NXP Mifare 4K Classic Smartcard. NXP Mifare 4K Classic is a multi-application card and the LASSeO specification allows multiple services to coexist inside the National Smart Card Project (NSCP) application shell.

A correctly encoded LASSeO compliant smartcard can potentially be re-used through the addition of new services to the card as and when these are required by the cardholder, rather than by requiring a new card to be issued. This re-usability has an important impact on the overall issue and operating costs for smartcard schemes, management of the back-office systems and on the public acceptance of the smartcard schemes.

The software developed focuses initially on the NXP Mifare 4K card and tests compliance with the LASSeO specification in the following ways:

- It identifies and analyses the card application structure, including reading the Mifare Application Directories (MAD) and the card application specific directories.
- It identifies the NSCP services held within the card.
- It analyses the data encoding compliance with the LASSeO mapping specification.
- It analyses and tests the card security layer and the correctness of the read encryption keys.
- It then produces a report in text and graphical format including a data layout map and card memory usage map for each service
- It produces an overall usage map identifying the location and size of unused areas of the card.

In addition to the reports generated by the tool, AIDC can also provide relevant information related to unusual card scenarios, co-existence of legacy systems, encoding/encrypting non-conformity, etc.

A spokesman for LASSeO commented, “We worked closely with AIDC on this project and we were very impressed with their approach. Their experience across a range of automatic identification and data capture technologies has proved very valuable in developing this tool. I would urge all local authorities and their card issuers to make use of this service and ensure that their cards comply with the relevant standards.”

According to Ken Bellamy, Operations Director at AIDC,  the LASSeO compliance tool has been designed with extensibility in mind. “It was important for us that the compliance tool could deal with a number of scenarios. This is particularly important in terms of the addition of future services, testing and analysing the ITSO Transport shell which may be co-resident on the card if it is used for the NCTS scheme or extending the testing capability to other types of card platforms such as Mifare Des-Fire, Java etc.”

The service costs £995 but is being offered at a special introductory price of £600. Anybody wanting to know more about the scheme or how to get a card tested should contact Ken Bellamy on 01266 720 780 or via email at ken.bellamy@aidc.org.