Learning Institutions

Chapter One

Introduction

1.0. Background

Many learning institutions are faced with numerous challenges among them access control, student monitoring and fees collection. One outstanding challenge is how to control the entry of students into the Institution's premises and granting them different levels of access to different resources such as classrooms, laboratories, Cafeteria, Library among others. For instance, in Strathmore University, students have to show their Identity cards to the guards at the entrance so as to be allowed to enter the University premises at any given time. Every student who posses the Identity card is presumed to have paid all the fees as required by the institution and therefore allowed to enter the university premises. Other than compliance to fees payment, such a student is presumed to have fulfilled all the University demands such as dress code and general grooming.

This presents a great challenge on the administration in ensuring that it frequently confiscates student Identity cards from the bearers to verify whether they have complied with the set requirements. This is a very inefficient process because the administration assumes that at the time of picking the cards from students, all of them are present. This is usually not the case. Some students are canning enough to ensure that whenever the administrator enters the class to collect the cards, they walk out as if they are going to relief themselves and in the process they don't get to hand in their identity cards.

Another problem is that the physical checks done by the security officers are, in most cases, ineffective and because of the growing population of both students and staff accessing facilities, the security personnel appear to play a negative public relations role as they struggle to control this access particularly at the gate of the main building.

The expansion of facilities and equipment in institution of learning and the increase in population and activities at the institutions in addition to the ineffective and inefficient methods of controlling access to the facilities and equipment present an unacceptable level of risk. It is also the intention of the University Management to make the University a centre of academic and professional excellence. This implies appropriate use of technology and systems that provide a pleasant atmosphere and contribute to positive customer relations. The present situation is far from this.

Automated methods and particularly the use of appropriate IT systems are needed to achieve an appropriate level of security and control while maintaining an atmosphere of efficiency and respect to the University stakeholders.

1.1. Problem Statement

With the introduction of free primary education in Kenya in the year 2003 and the subsequent free secondary education in the year 2007, there has been an increase of the students clearing high school education. Over a half of the students that sit for their secondary education pass with grades that can admit them to tertiary and institutions of higher learning. This has led to a rapid rate of expansion of many institutions of higher learning in Kenya.

With such an increase in student population, there arises need to have enough staff in these institutions to cater for the rising need of the admitted students. Physical facilities such as buildings, staff offices, computer laboratories, computers, internet access points, classes and lecture theatres among others also need to be expanded in a commensurate rate. With this increases, there arises need for security and proper control of people accessing such resources. An electronic security system is the most preferred security system by many organizations.

At this time and age, the responsibility for creating, changing and cancelling access to resources in any organization is distributed to its several parts or departments. The general term access refers to entry to buildings, parking areas, user accounts, access to network domains among others. Physical access control traditionally