468 Mornar, Fertalj, Kalpic & Krajcar Credit Card System for Subsidized Nourishment of University Students Vedran Mornar, Krešimir Fertalj, Damir Kalpic and Slavko Krajcar University of Zagreb, Croatia Copyright © 2002, Idea Group Publishing. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In Croatia the Ministry of Science and Technology is the major provider of funds for higher education. There are four universities, each consisting of a number of relatively independent and dislocated faculties and academies. In 1997, the Ministry engaged the authors to computerize the system for subsidized nourishment of the university students. The initial plan was to establish a simple credit card system. Faced with political and technical infrastructure difficulties, the authors had to develop a heterogeneous distributed database scheme and develop proprietary replication mecha- nism, capable to exchange high volumes of data over a slow network or over dial-up networking. The system has achieved full functionality at the largest university in Croatia, and it is ready to be installed in the rest of the country. Although developed under tight budget, it has significantly improved the organization and it provides valuable data for conducting the policy of subsidized nourishment. BACKGROUND In Croatia for the majority of university students, no tuition is required. Moreover, the state provides for some of them subsidized housing and for all of them who are free of tuition, it subsidizes the nourishment in contract restaurants. The funding and responsibility is with the Ministry of Science and Technology. The Ministry itself had computer equipment and islands of computerization, which still could not be called an integral information system. Faculties and academies vary in size, from a few dozen students to thousands. Their level of organization and computerization varies heavily. Some have computerized most of their administrative functions (Kalpic & Mornar, 1994), while some do not have even the connection to the Croatian Academic Research Network (CARNet) (Pale & al., 1992), or in other words, they do not have Internet access. The annual amount offered to students in the Zagreb area was US$37,780,000. Out of this amount, the students have consumed the value of 13,423,000 US$. Precise data about all expenditures are stored in the database. An approximate amount of consumed subvention in the whole country is nearly US$20 million or expressed in the local currency, 160 million HRK.