Getting a new ID for students, faculty
Getting a new ID for students, faculty
Tech no longer using SS numbers for identification
By KURT HAUGLIE, DMG Writer
HOUGHTON — Although they were never intended to be used as such, it’s long been the practice to utilize Social Security numbers as identification numbers outside the Social Security system. With the recent increases of identity theft, however, that practice is changing at many institutions and organizations.
Mary Jane Lowney, director of Administrative Information Services at Michigan Tech University, said Tech is in the process of eliminating the use of Social Security numbers for identification throughout the university.
“We’ve been discussing this for about 10 years,” Lowney said, explaining that the current action at the university was spurred on by the recent passing of state and federal legislation requiring ending the practice of using Social Security numbers for identification purposes.
Lowney said seven years ago, the university stopped using Social Security numbers as identification for alumni. Now, the practice of using the numbers for faculty and student identification is changing.
Although the change will involve a lot of people, Lowney said it won’t be much of an inconvenience.
“The technical process is fairly straightforward,” she said. “We’re going to assign everybody a new number and put it into the database.”
Those new numbers will be randomly generated by a computer program, Lowney said.
“The actual changing of the numbers will be instantaneous,” she said. “We’re changing everybody at once.”
Lowney said the use of Social Security numbers won’t be completely eliminated at the university. They’ll still be needed for government programs such as financial aid and veterans services.
Besides her office, Lowney said other university departments involved in the change away from using Social Security numbers for identification were the registrar, financial aid, human resources, central computing and the chief financial officer.
Although the technical change over will be quick, Lowney said university officials realize it will take people awhile to get used to the change.
“The education will be ongoing,” she said.
Kurt Hauglie can be reached at khauglie@mininggazette.com
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