Zachary Maxwell is a 4th-grade kid who snuck a camera into a his school’s lunchroom for 6 months and made a movie out of it. Here is an outtake that shows what most of our children don’t tell us. After just a few minutes I know I don’t ever want to have to eat school lunches – yet, we make our helpless kids eat them every day.

The state is in the process of implementing a state-wide system by Xerox to have all parents of subsidized children use finger scanners when checking in and out.

Conventionally and historically, the parents had to sign their children in and out on a paper attendance sheet. Now they will have to use a finger scanner, similar to those used in health clubs and amusement parks.

The benefits are obvious: The parents have to do this themselves, since the scanners will not accept unregistered people. This proves that  they were present physically when they checked their children in and out. When using paper, a parent could fill out a whole month’s worth of attendance records at the end of the month, whether the children were there to receive care or not.

The objective of the state, of course, is to prevent providers from claiming fees for care that was never given. If there are no parents dropping off children, presumably there are no children receiving care, and money is not wasted.

The providers, of course, object. One of their complaints is that parents threaten to pull their children from the program rather than using finger scanners.

Really?

Care for a child could easily cost between $500 and $800 a month, most of which is paid by the state, if the parent qualifies for the program. Are they claiming that a parent is willing for forego $800 in state subsidy assistance, just because the state wants to make sure they were really there?

It sounds to me like the program is working already, without even being fully deployed. Those that are getting care that is not real, to the point where they are willing to forgo the money, are reluctant to participate?

Mission accomplished.

Time Management in a Connected World (CCDAA) 03-08-13.

Of course, parents who do not understand the technology used, would be concerned. I would be too. It seems that in most schools the problem is more one of education of parents and students before implementing the program, rather than an actual privacy concern.

A palm scanner simply takes a digital infrared image of the palm of the person, detects the vein patterns, which are as unique to a person as a fingerprint, and records this pattern as a string of numbers. That string of numbers is then associated with an account, so payments can be deducted.

Essentially, this is the same process that would be applied if the child used a debit card. There are many problems with debit cards in the hands of children, of course. They can lose the cards, forget the cards, or they can be taken away by other children forcibly or teasingly.

Children don’t lose or forget their hands, and it’s pretty difficult for a bully to force another child’s hand to pilfer a lunch. So palm scanning, from the surface, seems to be a pretty good idea.

Now let’s examine the possibility of the scanned numeric result getting into the wrong hands, which seems to be a big concern for many parents. Let’s make it really invasive. Assume a thief stole the entire database of children’s hand scans from the school’s system – which is, by the way, likely located offsite in some secure data center.

The data thief would now have the account numbers and hand scan numbers of children:

Child Johnny Doe: Account number 1234, scan number 939395737873737134312413234214.

Child Jane Doe: Account number 5678, scan number….

You get the idea.

There is nothing the thief would be able to do with those numbers. They would be completely meaningless. Much more meaningless, by the way, than a debit card number would be, if stolen. Valid debit card numbers can actually be marketed by hackers and new cards can be made and used, at least until the owner locks the account.

So even at a total loss of the data to a hacker, there is no loss of privacy of the child.

One parent in an article suggested that it would be much easier and safer if a picture of the face of each child would flash on the screen of the cashier after the child gave her name, so the child could be authenticated. Interestingly, this actually is a violation of privacy. A facial picture of a child in a database could actually be abused if it fell into the wrong hands.

I will let the reader decide what is safer and what is less invasion of privacy:

A digital picture of a face of a person or child, or a digital representation of a picture of the vein patterns of the palm which are totally invisible to the naked eye?

With KinderScan, this information is used to make sure that the parent or other authorized adult that is dropping off or picking up children at childcare providers is really the person they say they are. One of the side benefits is that we also know the exact date and time when they were there.

When used in a childcare center, the KinderScan device is the electronic sign-in sheet for the parents and other authorized adults. Once authenticated, the screen shows the children assigned to the parent. This includes the parent’s own children, and possibly others, like those of carpool partners, relatives, etc. The parent selects the children to check in or out from a simple list by touching their names and the transaction is done. It takes a few seconds.

When we implemented palm vein scanning several years ago we didn’t know if the technology would work, would be reliable, and would be accepted by the public. The answers are in:

1. The technology works. We have not yet found a single person that cannot be palm scanned. The process is as fast as finger scanning.

2. Palm scanning is very reliable. If the palm is placed on the scanner properly, the scan works 100% of the time.

3. The technology is starting to go mainstream. Here is an article in USA Today. It shows how palm scanning is used in cafeterias by children to pay for their lunch.

Agencies that are interested in learning more about palm vein scanning in subsidized childcare should contact Controltec’s sales group for more information.

A parent would sign up a child for the subsidy program meant to help low-income families cover childcare costs while parents worked or went to school. The parent would sign an attendance sheets for several days in advance. The child would never show up. The daycare would submit the paperwork to the program’s administrator and be paid as if the child attended.

This is in response to recent press out of Mississippi where childcare providers and subsidy recipients are opposed to the state’s initiative to use biometric finger scanning for childcare attendance tracking.

This shows that agencies are realizing that paying for childcare without positive confirmation that children are actually in care, based solely on paperwork, invites fraud. It’s too easy to fill out a piece of paper, one in many thousands that get sent to agencies every month, claiming that a child was in care, when in fact that child may not even exist.

A more positive method of ensuring that the child exists and care was provided is necessary to ensure payments are “proper.”

The finger scanning simply confirms that the parents are physically present when they drop off or pick up children. The devices record the identity of the person as well as the date and time.

Conventionally, parents sign their children in and out on paper sign-in sheets. Since the parent can sign the paper anytime, the paper solution does not indicate that the parent was actually present, or that the parent actually exists.

Fraud in subsidized childcare programs is often perpetrated by collusion between childcare providers and parents. Providers claim fees for care for children that either don’t exist at all, or are not really in care. Such claims can easily be filed by paper attendance sheets that are filled out regardless of care actually provided.

Biometric finger scanning confirms that there is an actual person, who is assigned to a child as parent or other authorized adult, who is dropping off or picking up the child. This is much harder to “make up” if the care is not being provided or the parent and/or child don’t actually exist. This is one of the main reasons why states are interested in implementing biometrics.

In Mississippi, the Department of Public Services just installed such devices in 30 pilot locations. Already there are complaints by providers about this program, claiming that the costs of the program outweigh the benefits.

“This is a harm and we’re asking Department of Human Services to do no harm to these children,”

The state is asking parents who receive federal subsidy dollars to have their children taken care of by quality childcare providers for free or at greatly reduced fees to authenticate themselves when they drop of children, essentially proving to the state they were actually physically there when they said they were.

I do not understand how this harms children or providers.

Providers say many parents are threatening to pull their kids off the roll if the system is implemented.

So let me get this straight: Subsidies can amount to $800 for a young child per month for full-time quality care. Parents are willing to forego this money because they are asked to confirm that they were actually there, each day when they drop off and pick up the children?

This is not really about children. The problem is that the system Louisiana uses segregates children into the two categories, subsidized and non-subsidized. Parents who pay for their childcare in full don’t need to finger scan. Those that get subsidies do. This can stigmatize low-income children. It is exacerbated when the function they have to perform is associated with criminal activity – finger printing. While finger scanning and finger printing are completely diffrerent things, they look the same to the uninitiated and create adverse feelings.

Furthermore, when people drop off children on behalf of others, like neighbors that carpool, it may force a full-cost parent to finger scan to check in his neighbor’s subsidy children.

The real solution is to provide the capability to allow ALL parents of all children to check them in on the device, and then separate them out behind the scenes through software.

When Hurricane Sandy loomed on Sunday, we had decisions to make. We have a failover site in Atlanta that we can switch to in an emergency at any time. This failover is constantly kept up to date for this purpose. We decided to ride out the storm, looming as it was.

QTS, in preparation to support their servers and related infrastructure through the storm, stocked up on gasoline for generators, food and water for staff, and communicated their plans regularly to all its customers, including us. On Monday night around 9:00 pm, the datacenter lost utility power and switched to generators. Our system remained unaffected. QTS updated us regularly about the current status, including when they obtained a special permission from the local authorities to allow a fuel truck to drive into downtown to refill tanks after about a day of running on generators.  On Wednesday morning around 10:00am, after about 36 hours of operation on backup generators, utility power was restored to downtown Jersey City and we were switched back to utility power without a hitch.

We chose well when we decided on IBM and QTS to serve us with data center capability. We were kept informed before and during the weather catastrophe on the east coast and metropolitan New York and New Jersey. Our system stayed up through the worst hurricane on the east coast on record, with not a second of downtime, with the datacenter right in the eye of the storm. We didn’t even need to switch to failover which was available to us the entire time. This system has now withstood the full attack of two severe hurricanes within the last 15 months of operations and has experienced zero downtime.

Lessons learned:

• It is beneficial to be a bi-coastal company. While we could not count on our support center staff in New York to come to work to answer the phones during the storm, our staff in California was on standby to answer calls and make critical decisions on a 24/7 system.
• IBM and QTS performed flawlessly. Again, we chose our partners well.
• Having a failover site geographically removed from the primary site has a very calming effect on the nerves of those of us who are responsible to keep a 24/7 system running.

Thanks to our partners for their flawless work, to our staff members for their vigilance through a few tough nights and to our customers for their patience and trust while we weathered the storm.

It is an honor to serve you all.

“We’re at a tipping point. If you cut it anymore, we’re done. I don’t think there will be an infrastructure for you to build on.”

Reeling from $1 billion in cuts the past four years, California’s early learning and child care system is able to maintain only the most basic services today as advocates look for hope out of the November election and signs that an economic upswing has taken hold.

Check this article for more details.