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Supporting transparency of skills and qualifications

Europass Digital Credentials

The EU developed European framework for issuing digital credentials

Acting on the evident need to shift from paper-based certificates to digitally-signed credentials, the EU is stepping in to assist. The Commission is currently working on the Europass Digital Credentials Infrastructure which organisations can implement for free to issue digital credentials. The implementation will allow organisations to issue qualifications (like a degree or vocational training), apprenticeships or participation certificates efficiently through a secure, trustworthy and fraud-resistant digital infrastructure.

What exactly is the Europass Digital Credentials Infrastructure?

The Europass Digital Credential Infrastructure is a set of standards, services and software which allows institutions to issue digital, tamper-proof qualifications and other learning credentials within the European Education Area. With it learners, employers, education and training providers and other authorised bodies have a simple and trustworthy way of verifying the validly and authenticity of digital credentials.

Europass Digital Credentials Infrastructure

What kind of implementation support is offered?

The European Commission makes adopters’ lives easier by providing detailed documentation, services code samples and open-source code as well as the following resources:

  • —A Developer portal that provides a detailed data model, business guidelines, standards and API documentation;
  • A Github allowing you to reuse (contribute to) code for issuing, storing, sharing and verifying digital credentials;
  • A Help Desk which can assist with queries on development.

It further provides APIs to allow sharing of information between student data or human resource management systems and our infrastructure. This allows any developer to build an EDCI-compliant credential issuer.

What is the cost of implementing the infrastructure?

Europass Digital Credentials are legally equivalent to paper-based certificates across the European Union and all components of the infrastructure are open and free. Neither credential issuers nor credential holders have to pay for any of the services or use the cloud-based services of Europass.

Basically, a suite of free software, tools and services are offered to help individuals or organisations to:

Europass Digital Credentials Infrastructure Functions

How is it relevant to you?

Europass is a free open-access open tool that is supported by the European Commission. Europass offers a single interoperability mechanism for credentials across the European Education Area – a market of over 500 million people. Interoperability with Europass is relevant for:

Student Management System Providers

  • —Directly issue digital credentials, circumnavigating the use of third-party platforms, which can be stored in any Europass-compliant wallet
  • The digital credentials issued by your system will have legal equivalence to paper-certificates within the EU

Learning Portfolio providers

  • —Offering a Europass-compliant wallet service will allow your wallet owners to store their other Europass-complaint credentials as well, and enjoy the advantage of the Europass verification services
  • Allow credential holders to display and share their skills and learning achievements in a standardised and reliable format

HR Systems / Job Platforms

  • —Read and interpret learning outcomes that credential issuers and holders communicate
  • Verify Europass Digital Credentials quickly and automatically

How to get involved?

This online group aims to provide a growing selection of vendor-specific messages, resources and an event calendar, so please check back regularly.

We also invite you to join one of our 4 online public webinars in early 2020 where you can not only learn more about the initiative, but also ask questions about your practical involvement.