Description of IFM

The project is expected to significantly lower the barriers to mobility and encourage the use of public rather than private transport, contributing to a reduction of carbon emissions and a reduction or elimination of paper tickets, thus further enhancing the impact of smart media on environment and on the efficiency of public transport.
It will be possible to tailor the media to assist specific groups (e.g. existing concessionary travellers, benefit recipients or part-time workers) thereby supporting the EU’s Social Inclusion Agenda.

The project is based on delivering an ICT environment that supports nomadic passengers. It will be delivered through work packages covering trust modelling, privacy modelling, common applications and interoperable media, model of IFM organisations and supporting back office ICT system interfaces. It will be managed to ensure effective and efficient consensus and dissemination of best practice among all stakeholders.
The project is designed to provide world leadership in its segment and to deliver results which can be transferred to areas outside of the transportation sector world-wide. It will allow manufacturers and suppliers to offer the end-to-end, lossless nature of the IFM platform and transactions in other fields, thereby reducing time to market and lowering the cost of implementing other comparable schemes.

General Objectives

The key stakeholders of the IFM Forum perceive the IFM Project as a well-suited framework to coordinate their experience and share it with a wider community of beneficiaries in Europe through the IFM Forum organised by the UITP.

The objective is to avoid the establishment of enduring isolated national solutions and to define route-maps leading the way toward pan-European interoperability.

The IFM Project aims to be a European wide initiative dedicated to the establishment of attractive access to public transportation with modern fare management which is safe, reliable and convenient for both users and operators. Once achieved, this may serve as a model for many further countries outside Europe faced with the need to strengthen the use of public transport.

The “IFM Project” will be the first step of the IFM initiative. The ultimate goal of the IFM Project at the end of the two-years is a European-wide agreed concept (Route Map) developing shared back-office rules for cross-border data exchange and the associated European Secure Access Module (EU-SAM). It will create a documented framework by 2010 to deliver the requirements for secure, fully-interoperable portable object for seamless mobility on public transport accessible to all European Citizens. In a second step comprising Research and Technological Development (RTD) and field operational tests, a European interoperable fare management standard will be developed and implemented by 2010.

Following the definition and information sharing phase, existing and new schemes will be able to plan convergence strategies based on experience and utilising known technologies to enable a common Interoperable Fare Management area.
The beneficiaries will be:

· Transport Customers (“users”) that will be able to use their local IFM transport
  cards outside their home networks as well as to use a multi-application
  contact-less wallet of their choice to upload the transport applications they
  need and carry the virtual transport tickets attached to each of them.

· Transport Authorities that will be able to build new fare and distribution
  agreements with the support of standardised specifications.

This will produce new inputs to set objectives to complement the existing set of standards. The EU – through CEN – has been very active in developing specific standards for the data elements necessary to support electronic ticketing. Recently approved, ISO EN 24014-1 was initiated by European proposals and complements the data elements described in EN 1545.
Pilot EU-led projects such as CALYPSO and TRIANGLE have made some progress in implementing and demonstrating the concept of interoperability.
The stakeholders wish to maintain this dynamic attitude of Europe for this subject.

Overall Strategy and general description

This project is directed at making the mobility of people more efficient and environmentally sustainable by facilitating informed modal switching and the seamless accessibility of public transport. It aims at innovative, safe and reliable ticketing and fare management across Europe using interoperable smart media with the specific aim of encouraging increased usage of public transport.

The work plan and its work packages are designed to facilitate the following operational impacts:

· Greater awareness of the benefits of applying smartcard enabled ICT
  Solutions to Implement harmonized Interoperable Fare Management for
  scheme for operators, customers and government across Europe

· The dissemination of knowledge of how to set up an Interoperable Fare
  Management scheme, the ICT systems, the players, their roles, and how to
  achieve the maximum benefits

· The spreading of excellence through the description of best practice in meeting
  European standards

· The respect of privacy through the adoption of a common privacy model
  compatible with the business needs

· The enhancement of security and minimisation of fraud by the adoption of a
  shared trust model