One Card to enhance McMaster student and staff experience


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 it 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. Click here to learn more about project details including scope and timelines.

“The university recognizes the importance of adopting a one card outlook, and this means the future services and infrastructure will give a strong preference toward integration capability,” says Deidre (Dee) Henne, assistant vice president and chief financial officer.

“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 will be in-scope, and we are excited to help make this a reality for the institution.”

In November 2021, McMaster released its request for proposals (RFP) to identify vendor solutions with proven experience and implementation support to roll out the integration of services in phases. The One Card vendor selection will occur in early 2022.

The Office of the CFO will be hosting quarterly One Card Town Halls launching in 2022, with the first information session planned to be a virtual session on Tuesday, January 25 from 1:30 to 3:00pm.

Learn more about the planned town halls here.