Framed within the UNIDIGITAL Plan, and funded within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (BOE 179, RD 641/2021), the CertiDigital project aims to lay the foundations of a technological and service infrastructure that allows the Spanish Universitary System (SUE) to be able to define, in the Europass data model, those use cases that it considers of interest and issue their digital credentials. The technologies behind are aligned with the ongoing initiatives of the European Commission EDC (European Digital Credentials for Learning) and EBSI (European Blockchain Services Infrastructure).
The project started 2022 with an online kick-off session in which the foundations of the project were laid, with the participation of 6 coordinating universities and another 17 partner universities acting as early-adopters. Throughout the year, the project has made significant progress in identifying impacts, clarifying and aligning objectives, in defining the solutions to apply in each case, and is now consolidated under a strategy based on 4 fundamental pillars:
Coordination Committee, with representatives of the 6 coordinating universities and which meets periodically with the function of coordination, management and decision-making, promoting homogeneous criteria and actions.
Technical Committee, made up of professionals from the 6 coordinating universities, who meet weekly and who, in close collaboration, have established the requirements that the CertiDigital software platform must meet. In order to implement the Platform and adapt it to the Spanish University System (SUE), a joint tender was launched during the second semester, the result of which is currently being evaluated.
Pilot Use Cases to implement verifiable digital credentials in 2023. In this regard, each of the 23 Universities in the consortium has selected and specified its own use case, and has worked to identify the impacted academic, administrative and technical processes, detailing in each case what is expected to be achieved as a result of the accreditation/certification process.
Communication and collaborative work: Throughout the year there have been two face-to-face sessions, several online meetings, and various training activities, complemented by the use of collaborative tools and the incorporation of a course in EdX, a specific communication portal, and a project brochure. All these initiatives have helped to enhance the level of interaction, and therefore to generate synergies between the different Universities, directing the work of all towards common objectives.
Year 2023 will bring us fascinating new challenges, the most notable of them being:
- Launch the development and integration of the CertiDigital Platform in EBSI, similar to what has been done in 2022 for EDC.
- Carry out the deployment and integration of the CertiDigital Platform and the technological solutions underlying the issue of digital credentials, as well as the adaptation of the corporate systems that require it as identified during the previous works.
- Complete the modelling of the Use Cases worked during all these months and deploy them within the systems, as well as advance in the dissemination of knowledge of this technology in the different departments of the partner Universities.