Secondary School (Singapore) turns to smart access solutions to reduce manpower and time needed for physical key exchanges.
In Singapore, secondary education is mandatory for all children aged 13 - 17. Due to the pandemic, the government recently implemented regular home-based learning for all secondary and tertiary educational institutions. Coupled with the impending shift towards digital literacy, this has also led the school to make the decision to provide personal learning devices (PLDs) for its secondary one and two pupils.
The devices are stored in locked cabinets in each of the classrooms, including a few mobile carts meant for transporting the laptops to various rooms. The Desktop Engineers (DEs) are the only authorised personnel to access these locations and manage multiple physical keys. When the students require PLDs for class, the teacher and DE have to arrange a schedule to go down physically to manually unlock the cabinet. The DEs also manually record the loans via paper trials which can result in incomplete audit trails due to human errors.
What we did for them
20 Smart Padlocks on the cabinets and mobile carts for the school to grant access to the laptops in all 14 classrooms, using the remotely generated PIN codes simultaneously.
Easier access management for the staff such as revoking access for substitute teachers easily, and reassignment of Bluetooth Keys for any newly joined teachers.
Full visibility of activity logs for security management protocol.
The Benefits
As the school is able to efficiently grant access to the cabinets remotely and securely, there is no need to rely on physical key unlocks. As a result, they are able to cut the time spent (15-20 minutes) for every physical key unlocks, which can accumulate to at least an hour per day.
The DEs are able to grant One-Time or Duration PIN codes to substitute teachers easily without compromising on security. While doing away with the inconveniences, they’re able to focus on other more meaningful tasks such as further digitization programmes to benefit the pupils. The teachers also enjoy greater flexibility on their schedules. They are now able to focus primarily on material preparation for imparting valuable knowledge to the students.
With such a hassle-free and contactless way of granting access, the ICT department has currently over 106 users of the padlocks since the implementation of the solution in late 2019 and the solution is well-received by the ICT staff and teachers alike.
For more information, visit the iglooworks website.