Actual Attendance in REAL TIME…Down to the Second!

Louisiana was the first state to use fingerprint scanning for tracking time and attendance of subsidy families in the Certificate Program. The biometric fingerprint system only requires a simple swipe of your client’s finger. This process takes under two seconds to complete. Clients simply swipe their finger at the start and end of daily child care services. The biometric fingerprint system records all the information live. Reports will be accurate down to the second.

Louisiana pays for ACTUAL ATTENDANCE in six minute increments.  So, if a child is in attendance for 59 minutes in a given hour, the provider is only paid for 9/10’s of an hour.  If a child is in attendance for only five minutes of any consecutive hour…zero is paid to the provider for the first five minutes but the provider would be paid in full for the previous hour. (Click here to review Louisiana Minutes Payment Schedule.)  (Louisiana does generously reimburse and allow payment for up to five days absent PER MONTH!)

MDHS has stated that policies for full-time and part-time attendance will continue to be followed in Mississippi.  “Real Time” will determine if that is a true and honest statement. (MDHS as already enacted a “rule” with retro-active application – wrongly explained as in-house policy – that has had an adverse economic impact on parents and providers by now allowing CCDF payment for ONLY fifteen days absent PER YEAR beginning October 1, 2011. Providers must receive full collection of fees at 95% enrollment at rates that cover costs to be financially viable as a business or quality early learning program. Click here to review Education Week’s article on policy and Iron Triangle of Early Care Education Finance.)

A strict federal deadline for spending ARRA funds required that all stimulus money had to spent by September 30, 2011.  On that very date, MDHS purchased 1,815 VeriFone Vx 570 and 1,815 Safran Morpho Track MSO 300 scan machines which use fingerprint images to track a child’s attendance. (Click here to review the invoice.)

The biometric fingerprint system only requires a simple swipe of your client’s finger. This process takes under two seconds to complete. Clients simply swipe their finger at the start and end of daily child care services. The biometric fingerprint system records all the information live.

Hinds County providers participating in Allies for Quality Care will pilot the implementation of fingerprint scan machines beginning Septemebr 1, 2012.

Pros and Cons

Biometric devices capture, store and compare data. The image of the fingerprint is converted into a string of numbers and spread out across offsite servers.

Advantages

• Biometric technology increases security, reduces fraud, eliminates the inconvenience of lost keys and identity cards, reduces administration costs, eliminates the need for remembering passwords and provides protected and reliable access to information. Biometric data is universal, unique, permanent and impossible to forge.

Limitations

• Biometric technology has some limitations. It is costly to implement, manage and maintain; fingerprint scanning is difficult to implement in certain ethnic groups and elderly populations, whose fingerprint quality is not the best for fingerprint scanning; fingerprints can change over time–this is particularly true with manual laborers who work primarily with their hands; face recognition systems may pose a problem if a user changes hair style, wears/removes makeup or a hat; and retina biometric systems are technical and difficult to use. Biometric technology is also associated with privacy issues, and biometric data could be used without the owner’s knowledge or consent.

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