The government has demanded that London's Oyster travel cards be made compliant with the UK smartcard standard ITSO that is being rolled out across the rest of the country.

In its response to a report on ticketing and concessionary travel from the Commons Transport Committee, which stated that ministers "must not force ITSO onto the London Oyster system", the Department for Transport (DfT) said: "Given the importance of London to the national transport system, it is essential that ITSO smartcards can be used by passengers using public transport to travel to, from, or through London."

MPs on the committee had expressed concerns that forcing ITSO compliance on the Transport for London (TfL) scheme would jeopardise commuters’ reliance on the touch-and-go passes and cause integration problems.

"It is imperative that any introduction of ITSO on the Oyster system be rigorously piloted to prevent any loss of operational efficiency or customer confidence in smartcards,” said MPs in the report.

The committee said TfL should not be financially penalised for having been at the vanguard of smartcard ticketing.

But the government has now said that since Oyster was designed specifically for use in London and is not suitable to be rolled out nationally, ITSO compliance is essential.

“We need to make sure that the national ITSO smartcard [standard] will work effectively in London, which we aim to achieve by adding ITSO interoperability to the Oyster network," said the DfT response.

In 2006, TfL and DfT agreed plans for Oyster to be used in mainline train stations in the capital, with the new standard included in rail franchises as they are renewed.

But rail and bus operators are not convinced about the return on investment in rolling out ITSO-based systems.

TfL will replace 21,000 readers to accept both ITSO and Oyster cards by 2010, but there is still a lot to be done, TfL’s director of fares and ticketing Shashi Verma told Computing in an interview earlier this year.

“We are working on the design of the new readers and will then move on to prototype testing and manufacturing, with a view to start trials by mid-2009,” he said.

Marrying the two standards is a simple task compared with that faced by other local authorities, said Verma.

“There are a number of ITSO readers, ticketing structures and back-office systems in the market, so the integration challenges are much tougher,” he said.

DfT and TfL are considering the result of feasibility work and have promised extensive testing.