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Technical University of Munich
Technical University of Munich

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1st International Stakeholder Dialogue

Building Institutional Trust around Digital Credentials

The 1st International Stakeholder Dialogue on “Digital Credentials for Higher Education Institutions (HEI)” took place virtually on June 16th, 2021, and presented an excellent opportunity to connect with Higher Education professionals working in Administration & IT, International Offices, and in Management & Strategy, with regulators and policy-makers on national and EU level, with developers, operators, and researchers from the Digital Credentials Community around the world.

Dr. Matthias Gottlieb from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) introduced the joint research project of TUM, Hasso-Plattner Institut (HPI), and German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Afterwards, Kim Hamilton Duffy (Chair of the W3C Credentials Community Group | MIT) and Philipp Schmidt (Director of Digital Learning and Collaboration, MIT Media Lab) made a case for standards in achieving interoperability. The keynote highlighted the importance of international collaboration within the Verifiable Credentials ecosystem and established common ground with the DCC’s (https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/) guiding principles and mission.

The Digital Credentials landscape is varied and continuously shifting, so the meeting focussed on open discussion with our stakeholders and workshops examining different perspectives on Building Institutional Trust. To start the debate, all participants categorized challenges to agreeing on a common standard for digital academic credentials by the degree of challenge and relevance to the project. The adaptation of organizational processes, legal frameworks and mutual trust between institutions were seen as especially challenging and relevant to about 100 participating stakeholders.

After the opening question, we discussed various facets of the primary topic in the following workshops with the audience:

  • Workshop 1: International compatibility and regulatory frameworks

Which regulatory aspects are particularly challenging for international academic collaboration? How can varying institutional traditions be accommodated?

      Talking points
Legal frameworks can be a tool to build mutual trust between institutions. There still seems to be a great need for overarching regulations along the process chain. Change is a vital topic. The group mapped particularly challenging regulatory aspects along the digital credentialing process from GDPR to SDG.

  • Workshop 2: Interoperable standards and processes within HEIs

How can differing administrative processes be digitized and adapted to a future international system?

      Talking points
Cooperation with Campus Management Systems is necessary. Coding semantics into the certificates with an underlying course structure would be helpful. Higher Education professionals should demand open standards from their vendors. The group mapped varying stages of digitization of administrative processes within their institutions and identified common systems and standards already in place.

  • Workshop 3: Trust and Transparency

How can trust in the system and thus digital credentials be established? How does the transparency of the system and openness of the design affect acceptance by stakeholders? How open should verification be, and which parties need to be involved in the verification process?

      Talking points
The link between the certificate and its holder must be trusted. Accreditation of the issuer by a government body or consortium builds trust. The status of the certificate is active and could be revoked if necessary. The group investigated which organizations issue trust at certain stages of the digital credentialing process and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of service-centric and user-centric systems.

You are welcome to dive into the complete workshop documentation listed below.

 Event Documentation for Download

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