If all goes according to plan, new Penn State identification numbers will be in effect at the beginning of next year. However, for things to go according to plan, students may have to wait for their final grades.

The conversion will change the identification numbers of faculty, staff and students from social security numbers to new PSU-ID numbers. The nine-digit numbers will be randomly assigned in the format of 9-XXXX-XXXX.

Jim Wager, assistant vice provost for enrollment management and university registrar, said to complete the conversion, the university needs to re-index the social security number to the new PSU-IDs.

There are two large administrative databases within the university, he said. One contains student information, and the other is for the business functions of the university and deals with things such as the payroll.

Certain Penn State resources, such as eLion, will be suspended from use during the conversion process, he said.

The systems' shutdown will take place Dec. 18 and may interrupt the posting of final grades, as the last day of fall semester finals is Dec. 17.

"When the decision was made to follow this approach of re-indexing the numbers, we looked at the entire year trying to pick a time that would minimize university functions," Wager said. "No time was perfect."

Robin Anderson, associate director of customer communications for information technology services, said the conversion is scheduled to last one week, and teachers unable to enter grades before the conversion will be able to do so immediately after it.

"We picked a time with the least impact across the university by the number of systems and people, not just the students, that would be affected," she said.

Wager said the conversion will take days, and the only way to complete it is to close down the databases completely.

Joseph Horn, aerospace engineering professor, said the time crunch between the last day of finals and system shutdown could be an inconvenience.

Horn said he has a final scheduled for the Friday of finals week this semester, and while he doesn't know the exam schedule for the fall, it could make it hard to get grades in before the conversion begins.

"I don't know if it will be an inconvenience then," he said. "It's really hard to tell what I'll be doing, but it could be."

Everyone associated with the university will receive a new PSU-ID in place of his or her social security number, Wager said. He added that everyone would be issued new ID cards as well.

"New cards will be issued in mid to late November," he said. "We will ask staff and students to carry both cards until January."

The new system should be fully operational beginning in January 2005.

Wager said the conversion is necessary as a privacy issue because of the explosion of Web-based commerce in the past few years.

"By using the social security number, we have compromised people's identities," he said. "We're trying, as an institution, to not play into this."

However, preventing identity fraud is coming at a price to the university. Wager said the conversion is a huge undertaking.

"Some people have equated this conversion as the same for the efforts into the Y2K conversion," he said. "It's costing money and effort."

Anderson said there is no estimate to total costs of the project. She said there will be a central cost to the university for the conversion as well as costs to individual departments to accommodate a new university policy.

"Once the conversion has taken place, no one within the university may use social security numbers at all," she said.

Therefore, individual departments have to convert their databases to the PSU-ID at the same time the university makes the switch. Departments are in charge of funding their own projects.