Digital Student Data Portability (DSDP) has been an objective of several organizations (for e.g the “Groningen Declaration”). The aim is to make it easy to securely exchange student information (“Data”) among stakeholders such as educational institutions, evaluation agencies, etc.
In the past couple of decades, efforts towards inter-operability and system compatibility typically centred around developing common data exchange formats. The idea being that if issuers adopted a uniform, machine-readable format for issuing student credentials, the receivers could then build systems to automate the reading / importing and processing of such data. This would result in enormous saving of time and effort. In addition, it would encourage the development of new products and services. A few such uniform formats have also been proposed, although wider acceptability eludes.
Truecopy Credentials Pvt Ltd agrees with the basic idea behind DSDP, and the benefits that would accrue to various players in the ecosystem. We however diverge on how to go about it, particularly in year 2023.
Consider the following:
1) The success of a common standard typically depends on its adoption. If enough receivers do not support it, issuers do not feel the need to adopt it, and vice-versa. This usually results in a catch-22 situation.
2) There are quite literally tens of thousands of issuers / receivers, in addition to other players in the eco-system. Arriving at a consensus and pushing towards its acceptance is an uphill task. The system requires the issuers to comply with the standard before receivers begin to benefit. In other words, it requires “A” to do something so that “B” can benefit.
3) The data-interchange formats would need to be incorporated into the IT systems of issuers and receivers. There are numerous IT systems in use today which will all need to be modified. Moreover, these systems would need to be constantly updated as the common format evolves over time.
Truecopy Credentials proposes an alternative approach based on a “Cloud Interpreter” which hosts the “Interpreter API”. This API can accept a document issued by any issuer in any form and generate the type of output which a receiver requires. For example, an issuing university may continue to issue its PDF transcript exactly as it has always been doing. Invoking the Interpreter API, the PDF can be converted by the receiver to an XLS / JSON / XML with the desired fields. The Interpreter API approach allows third parties to build applications say for analytics for example for the benefit of entities in the eco-system.
Authenticity of data is ensured by Digital Signature chain, wherein at each step of data creation / modification, the signature of the entity is appended thereby creating a signature chain that cannot be broken or modified without being found.
EDUCE is now available as a Beta, and processes transcripts issued by any university in India.
