Interoperability explained

Digital learning has made it easier than ever to gain skills and knowledge, and share these achievements when applying to jobs or educational opportunities. A learner completes a program, earns a digital badge, but then hits a wall when the application system doesn’t recognize the credential or the employer's software can’t verify it.

For learners, job seekers, employers, and workforce advocates, disconnected credential platforms that cannot “talk” to each other, applicant tracking systems (ATS), and learning management systems (LMS) can create unnecessary friction at exactly the moment progress should accelerate.  

This is where interoperability matters. In simple terms, interoperability is the ability for different systems to communicate, share, and consume data across platforms without the loss of trust or accuracy. In an interoperable system, digital credentials follow open standards so that they are in a structured format that can be read and verified across multiple contexts. This means that learners can share their verified achievements across platforms without the friction of mismatched file formats or data scattered across systems.  

The Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC), a network of postsecondary institutions housed at MIT Open Learning, develops and implements open source software for interoperable, verifiable digital credentials. A new guide by the DCC—The Essential Guide to Digital Credential Interoperability: From Paper Trails to Opportunity Pathways—explains key themes, challenges, and opportunities related to interoperability, grounded in a series of fictional, yet realistic, vignettes from the perspectives of learners, employers, registrars, and workforce advocates. 

Olivia, for example, has worked as a retail associate in Las Vegas for six years, earning skill-specific badges in customer service, Point of Sales systems, inventory management, and merchandising through her employer's learning management system. She’s applying for a retail manager position in Seattle, but she faces a critical problem: her badges are locked in her employer's LMS and can't be exported. She mentions them in her resume but can't provide verifiable proof, leaving her hoping the hiring manager will trust her word—or risk her current job by using her manager as a reference.

Meanwhile, Lars, the hiring manager in Seattle, receives over 100 applications filtered through an ATS that can't read Olivia's credential format. Despite being highly qualified, Olivia's application is automatically filtered out before Lars ever sees it. He misses a strong candidate, and Olivia loses an opportunity—not because she lacks the skills, but because the systems can't talk to each other. This is the interoperability gap in action.

In an interoperable system, following open standards like Open Badges 3.0, Olivia could export her badges from any system and share them directly with Lars' ATS which would automatically read and verify her credentials, displaying her complete skill profile without manual re-entry. Lars would see qualified candidates like Olivia who might otherwise be filtered out, and Olivia could showcase her abilities with cryptographically verifiable proof. 

Cultivating an interoperable, equitable system requires stakeholders including education and training institutions, employers, and job seekers to make some big changes. But it is a solution that is well within reach. The DCC Interoperability Guide enables you to envision yourself within an interoperable system, offering resources to help you identify steps for taking action.