A public preview of Europass Digital Credentials, an interoperability portal and v0.9 of the Europass Learning Model was launched simultaneously with the main Europass launch on 1 July. During the public preview phase, education and training institutions are able to issue legally admissible digital credentials, while users are able to store these in their Europass profile and verify their authenticity. A digital credentials wallet is automatically created for each Europass user, meaning that Europass is already one of the largest digital-credential wallet providers globally. 
 
During summer, the Online Credential Builder was released, which allows for smaller providers to design and issue credentials entirely in-browser without needing to connect external systems or upload files. Tutorials on creating credentials were also published on the platform. 

The Commission has also been coordinating with global standardisation bodies including the W3C, the Digital Credentials Consortium and the T3 Innovation Network in the United States to ensure global recognition and interoperability with the Commission’s emerging standard and technology stack.

Progress with Europass Digital Credential pilots

Many of the 18 countries, who joined the pilot between April and November of 2019, have made considerable progress with their activities. At this stage 10 of the 18 countries are actively issuing or preparing to issue credentials, while others are in preparatory/organisational stages. 

The digital credentials support team has organised 5 bilateral meetings held with piloters since the Europass portal launch to assist with system implementation and design, and continues to offer this support to all involved countries. Furthermore, a survey of piloting countries was used to gain feedback on the system design as it stands. This indicates that the most highly rated features of the system are: 

• Legal admissibility of credentials 
• Built in global standards (e.g. ISCED, ESCO, EQF)
• Integration and inclusion of credentials in Europass

Obtaining e-Seals remains a challenge for institutions in several countries. Given that the e-seal infrastructure is a key requirement for legal admissibility, the Commission has provided detailed instructions on how to obtain e-seals.

Progress with Vendor Integration 

Many of the 18 countries, who joined the pilot between April and November of 2019, have made considerable progress with their activities. At this stage 10 of the 18 countries are actively issuing or preparing to issue credentials, while others are in preparatory/organisational stages. 
The digital credentials support team has organised 5 bilateral meetings held with piloters since the Europass portal launch to assist with system implementation and design, and continues to offer this support to all involved countries. Furthermore, a survey of piloting countries was used to gain feedback on the system design as it stands. This indicates that the most highly rated features of the system are: 

• Legal admissibility of credentials 
• Built in global standards (e.g. ISCED, ESCO, EQF)
• Integration and inclusion of credentials in Europass

Obtaining e-Seals remains a challenge for institutions in several countries. Given that the e-seal infrastructure is a key requirement for legal admissibility, the Commission has provided detailed instructions on how to obtain e-seals. 

Progress with Vendor Integration 

Europass has launched an Early Adopters’ Programme to assist vendors of credential systems. Outreach and engagement with such vendors is key to implementation of Europass Digital Credentials as they provide software to education and training institutions to enable them to issue credentials from their systems, and to enable employers, recruiters and institutions to accept digital credentials. Each interested vendor is given access to a number of developer tools, as well as direct support from the vendor team to support integration. 

On 29 July 2020, the Europass Digital Credentials Team organised a webinar to launch the programme, which was attended by over 70 representatives of vendors. As a result, 10 companies have expressed their interest to join the Early Adopters’ Programme: Udemy, LinkedIn, BCdiploma, Blockcerts, Skilllab, Pragadev/SkillsBoard, Digitary, FutureFit, BadgeCraft EU, and Switch. 

Meetings are being held with all these vendors in order to start the integration of Europass Digital Credentials into vendors’ digital ecosystem and will continue throughout September 2020. Integration will start from September onward. 
A second webinar will be held in September/October 2020 to reach more vendors, which have not attended this first webinar and would be interested to learn more about Europass Digital Credentials.

Next Steps on Europass Digital Credentials  

The Europass team is currently focused on rolling out multilingualism, increasing the customisability of the look and feel of credentials, as well as several features to facilitate interoperability.  
Once these features are launched, we will move the system out of ‘public preview’, and increase its prominence within Europass as a whole. A launch event is also being planned to allow early adopters (both participating countries and piloters) to showcase their uses of the system (expected midNovember 2020). 

Features under consideration given interest from participating countries, are: 

• Having access to an Easy-To-Deploy Infrastructure
•  Attest and Combine (micro-)credentials
•  Have access to an institutional Credential Archive Wallet
•  Support for remote e-sealing