1. Your London Card Scheme - Visions and Challenges
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Your London Card Scheme
- Visions and Challenges
Adrian Cannon
Managing Director
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Mobile: +44 (0)

2. A Vision for London 2 What’s the most important thing in the picture?
People – Londoners – those that live, work, learn and visit this most amazing of cities.
Of course London has never been a homogenous community – it has always been a collection of local communities collaborating at the most appropriate level to make London the great city it is today.
Part of being a Londoner involves interacting with your local government and relying on the services they provide to help us live our lives the way we want to.
We have a vision for a single card that can be used by Londoners in all their guises to make their interaction with their local government easier and more consistent.
This will make their lives easier but it will also make it easier for Local Government to help them. It will increase efficiency and save the overhead of issuing many different types of card for the huge variety of service that are provided.
The card could go beyond this already exciting vision to carry the Oyster facility – supporting the transport needs of Londoners in a convenient integrated approach. And even further to offer special discounts, loyalty rewards and other services.
This a a fantastic opportunity to create a cohesive approach to ease the delivery of services across London in a way that is highly desirable from the customer point of view.
But there are challenges . . .
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3. Ubiquity + Recognition
Why a Card Scheme
Ubiquity + Recognition
Of course the biggest challenge servicing the needs of Londoners is that they refuse to stay conveniently with Local Government boundaries.
They need to access library services at lunchtime in the Borough they work in, or visit a leisure centre near their Mum’s house and far from theirs. Of course visitors and commuters also need support and are often willing to pay for it but do not necessarily feel that they can make the most of the public resources offered near where they work.
This need to support Londoner’s lives wherever they live, work, learn or play means that our single card must be useful and accepted everywhere they choose to go.
It must be accepted across authority boundaries and customers must experience the same look and feel to the service wherever they use it. This encourages use and that all important sense of cohesion.
Achieving this demands collaboration between Local Government and other bodies to ensure that at an operational, technical, marketing and functional level the customers experience is universal and consistent wherever they use the card.
It may be tempting to believe that a single overarching approach would be useful. However in my experience the most successful uses of card technology are based on collaboration between competitors.
Each organisation involved in the Scheme must have the power to tailor and innovate within in it to meet the needs of their locality.
By allowing this freedom within the Scheme, and at the same time ensuring interoperability, the card scheme grows organically and rapidly without any single authority having to fund the whole scheme or pay for things they don’t need.
We need only look to the success of credit card schemes or GSM mobile phones to see the true power of schemes.
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4. Opportunities and Challenges
Delivering this Vision is the responsibility of London’s public bodies
but there is no need for short term large scale capital investment
The benefits are significant and go far beyond the ability of individual players to deliver the vision on their own
The challenges are significant but so are the rewards.
Please read “A Vision for the Your London Card Scheme” and take your part in the future.
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