Digital Credential Interoperability: Unblocking Universal Adoption

Digital credential standards and services are perceived to be the most powerful facilitators of bridging the gap between skills supplied by education providers and the skill sets demanded by the job market. By streamlining, and where possible automating, the processes of credential issuing, recognition, authentication and verification, digital credentials should not only benefit their owners, but also save significant amounts of time, money, and effort for organisations both on the issuing and on the verification side. However, more than a decade after Mozilla invented the Open Badges standard, these expectations remain to be fully met.

In today’s fast-paced world, digital credentials are emerging as means to support lifelong learners on their journeys of personal and career development. Ideally, an individual looking to upskill or reskill could search for courses based on aspired skill(s), enrol, and complete the learning experience, at the end of which they would receive a digital credential certifying that they have, indeed, acquired the planned learning outcomes and related skills. These credentials, individually or in combination, could then be presented to a (prospective) employer, who could immediately recognise and verify the match between the skills documented in the credential(s) and the skills required by the job vacancy.

With a myriad of credentialing services offering their solutions with this same pitch, a potential explanation for slower adoption could be a fear of ‘not choosing the best solution’. In education, many key stakeholders are waiting until they can safely commit to a dominant service or standard, while some pioneers are happy to take risks and become early implementers of different solutions. Where adoption seems to be lagging most, mainly due to lack of trust in digital credentials issued by 3^rd parties, is on the side of employers.

Interoperability between the different available services is key to ensure the increased uptake of digital credentials, both internationally and in our narrower European context. A few promising initiatives have been emerging lately that are not only emphasising the importance of interoperability, but also working on technical solutions to convert between standards such as the W3C Verifiable Credentials, the European Learning Model, Open Badges, etc, or apply multiple standards in the same digital credential simultaneously. In parallel with these efforts, we are seeing large scale digital credentialing initiatives rolling out both on national levels, and in specific educational domains, such as in higher-education, setting examples for others to follow.

However, as mentioned above, it is not enough to have credential issuing organisations working towards credential digitisation and interoperability. While workers of all ages will continue to upskill or reskill with increasing speed and frequency, the value of digital credentials comes not merely from their availability to be earned, but also their utility in skill recognition on the labour market. In 2022, 34.7% of non-formal education and training activities for adults were provided directly by their employer or prospective employer (source: Eurostat). This figure clearly demonstrates the need for, and importance of, in-service skill development of employees. However, these learning provision practices need to be complemented by employers offering ubiquitous verifiable evidence of newly acquired skills, so that the credentials’ holders can prove their fitness for future roles within and beyond their current workplace.

The slow uptake of digital credentials by the labour market presents a bottleneck, and the acceleration of the adoption process, both in roles as issuers and verifiers, is crucial to benefit both employers and their employees. But could we expect this final piece of the puzzle to fall in place and if so how could the implementation process be incentivised and speeded up? To learn more, come and join the discussion of a panel of experts who are deeply familiar with the W3C Verifiable Credentials, the European Learning Model and the Open Badges standards. Together with the panellists we will scrutinise and discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the expanding use of digital credentials, from the angles of accessibility, usability, proliferation, interoperability and trust issues, and hopefully come closer to understanding the real potential of digital credentials.

Written for OEB Global 2024 by Ildiko Mazar and the European Learning Model Support Team.