Digital Diploma powered by Blockchain Technology

Blockchain in Higher Education – The Transformation Begins

Higher education and better job opportunities are aspirational goals of many people. When applying for a new position or additional education, people often asked for a proof of an achievement. Today, the process of sharing and managing certificate and diploma data is mostly centralized with control being held by numerous authorities and institutions. 

The process of proving and validating achievements and certificates can be greatly simplified using Blockchain technology and give more control to the students and graduates over their educational data and information. 

Blockchain technology offers solutions to overcome today’s issues of common data sharing, like GDPR compliance, data ownership and authenticity of data sources. Below we outline a simple solution to verify educational achievements and certificates.

Watch Hands On Video

Current State of Data

Currently, the educational and diploma information is stored in centralized servers at numerous universities and education institutions in different countries, each governed by laws of different governments and institutions. When the graduates are required to share their education data with other schools or employers, it becomes a very complicated task to share and very hard to verify the authenticity for the receiving entity.

Blockchain technology can power a decentralized solution for a management and sharing of education data between students, universities, governments, and other third-parties, like potential employers, interested in the records – electronically, instantly and verifiable – solving the current problem of slow, mostly paper based records that are hard to get and share, as well as hard to verify for their authenticity.

Proposed Solution

The Blockchain powered solution aims at giving control and ownership to the graduates who have earned the diploma or a certificate so that they can decide on whether to share the information or not. The solution also makes the educational data more accessible and easier to share while also enhancing security and resistant to fraudulent records.

The proposed solution gives full control and ownership of the educational data to the graduates. It starts with an educational institution that creates and digitally signs the diploma and provides the digital and signed copy of the diploma to the graduate. In turn, the graduate holds and can now share the educational data in full or in parts with any interested third parties, like other schools and potential employers when needed. All requests, responses and sharing of data is recorded on the Blockchain to provide a trail of the entire history of an education record and control the access to the data. The Blockchain network that enables this process can be a decentralized network or a joint effort by educational institutions or governments.

Since the entire data record is encrypted, this solution is also GDPR or data privacy compliant as no personally identifiable information is being stored on the Blockchain. The Blockchain store the data access rights and tracks when data is accessed, in addition, it validates the actual educational achievements as they are attested and recorded by an educational institution. Simply put, the student is in charge who has access to the educational record, when that access is granted and to what level information is reveled.

The Blockchain powered solution comes with a clear set of goals:

• Graduate Controlled Data - educational data is in direct control of the graduate who has earned the degree or the certificate. This control should provide the graduates the ability to share and manage their data without going through any permissions or access control layer of the schools and governments.
• Tamper Proof - educational data managed and shared on the system should be fully tamper resistant. Only the schools and issuing institutions should have access to create or update educational achievements. The data should be able to be trusted by all who accesses it.
• Privacy Compliant – it should comply with all data privacy laws, like GDPR or California Data Privacy Act, in a way that no personally identifiable information is stored on the Blockchain itself and student has the rights to request to be forgotten and with that the links to the students data would be unreasonably severed.
• Ease of Access - the education data should be easily accessible by graduates so that it can be shared when needed. Once the data is shared by the graduates, it should be easy for the audience, i.e. schools or potential employers to read and verify the data.
• Immutable Audit Trail - the solution should provide the entire history of access and sharing of diploma data so that it can be easily verified. This history should be immutable.

Solution Details

The Blockchain solution contains the following roles participating in information flow:

• School - schools or universities issue the diploma for a student/graduate;
• Student or graduate – a person holding an educational record;
• Party of interest – any third party requesting access to educational data from a graduate

The solution will have the following applications:

• Existing school data store – create a data storage solution for the schools where the educational data is stored in a standardized format. The educational data will continue to be stored in these databases.
• Verified Blockchain Record – in addition to the traditional data storage, the school creates a single record of truth about the graduate or student educational achievements and stores it on the Blockchain.
• End User Application – this application allows easy access both for school and student or graduate to the data stored on the Blockchain.
• Access Portal – this is a read only application to view and read the education data for a graduate or student as well as potential employers or any other entities that the certificate was shared with. When a school or a potential employer wants to see an educational data for a graduate, they can request the access to the data which has to be approved by the graduate before access is granted. The Access portal can be also used when student or graduate proactively shares their educational records.
• Blockchain Network – this is a network that will host an immutable student data and access log, and can be run by a single school, a consortium of schools or a governmental agency.
• Identity and Key Management System - to verify requests and authenticate users and their data access rights, the identity data is stored with public/private key pair system and integrated into the existing identity network schools use today.

Functional Overview

1. Schools register their identities and publish their public keys on the Blockchain network. This steps creates a list of affiliate schools that participate in the digital diploma network.
2. Student or graduate registers with end user application and creates their own public and private key pair that ties him or her to a verified student record. The schools approve the student or invites student to register with secure link.
3. The schools create a digitally signed diploma and education record and stores them on the Blockchain network.
4. The Student or graduate can access that diploma via the end user application.
5. Third parties, including other schools or potential employers can request access to that diploma. Student or graduate can also proactively grant access to an interested party.
6. The student or graduate can approve or deny access to the diploma.
7. If access to the student education achievement is granted, it is shared with the interested party.
8. All steps are recorded on the Blockchain to verify the access control history to the data.

Benefits of the Digital Diploma powered by Blockchain Technology

The proposed solution has a great number of benefits compared to the existing centralized system of education record management. 

1. The educational data is fully controlled by the graduate who owns it.
2. The ease of sharing and verification of educational data enables all parties to exchange diploma information fast, electronically and securely and do not have to rely and depend on permissions and availability from the issuing schools. This is particularly necessary in case a schools goes out of business.
3. Full data privacy and compliance with all applicable laws like GDPR and CDPA.
4. The entire process of data sharing and access can be verified using the immutable audit trails available on the Blockchain.

Omnibasis offers schools and educational institutions a turnkey solution to manage educational data and access to it on the Blockchain without any monthly fees. Combine the power of powerful products like omniChain to define and store diploma records, omniTrust to manage data access and identity, with easy to use tools to create online and mobile apps in hours without a line of code.

We are calling all educational institutions. For educational bodies, small or large, our service is completely FREE of charge. Create a free business account and get stated today. We will comp your service forever.