Surfacing barriers to adoption

By Digital Credentials Consortium

At the Digital Credentials Consortium, we aim to develop technology and tools that make it easier for organizations to issue meaningful digital credentials using the W3C Verifiable Credentials (VC) and VC aligned standards such as Open Badges 3.0 (OBv3). The advantages of using these standards for learning and employment records (LERs) are many, including their use of digital signatures, rich metadata capabilities, and protection of learner privacy. However, for many learners the value of VCs lies in their ability to instantly share skills and achievements with a verifier, such as an employer.

Though the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC) and other standards aligned organizations have put forth significant effort towards the development of issuer tools and credential wallets, there has been a shortage of demonstrations or case studies that document and model the process for sharing credentials with employers. To this end, with the support of Walmart, the DCC has collaborated with JFF Labs to conduct deployments that demonstrate a full life cycle of a VC — from issuing, to claiming, sharing, and verifying.

As a first step, the project team developed criteria for selecting issuing organizations to participate in the pilot. Ideal candidates would have the resources and interest in shifting to a VC system with the potential to scale over the next year. Additional criteria included:

• A well defined credential use case: The project will demonstrate how learners or workers earn the credential and how they are shared and verified by employers.
• Experience with digital credentials: The issuing organization is familiar with the ecosystem overall and has issued some form of digital credential to at least 100 learners.
• Organizational capacity: The issuing organization is committed to adopting new technology that is rooted in open source and open standards.

Three organizations were then selected. By the end of the project period, two of the three organizations had successfully implemented DCC open source tools and issued credentials to learners who then claimed them in the Learner Credential Wallet and verifiably shared them using VerifierPlus. Though we did not achieve the goal of demonstrating full end to end use cases with all three deployments, this project surfaced many of the underlying barriers to adoption, which will be valuable as we continue to move forward as a community to make LERs as VCs more accessible and meaningful.

1. An issuing organization needs technical resources. For organizations that issue web hosted badges, they may be accustomed to the convenience of an out of the box solution. However, to date there are very few solutions that offer this convenience when it comes to issuing VCs. Compared to other badging platforms which may be hosted by the technology provider and require an account to login to a website, DCC issuer tools have been developed to be installed, deployed, and maintained by the issuer. The DCC has designed its free, open source issuer tools, including the Admin Dashboard, to make it easy for organizations to issue VCs but they nonetheless require a certain level of technical expertise. In both successful implementations, the pilot organizations partnered with developers who were able to install and deploy DCC open source software with minimal support.

The DCC learned that it is critical to be direct and specific in describing the baseline technical experience necessary to deploy and maintain its open source software. Knowledge of these skills may be likely in an organization with developers or engineers on staff. However, smaller organizations may need to outsource technical support. It is not feasible for administrative or managerial personnel to deploy and maintain the software independently. This experience includes:

• Access to a reliable web server and web server administration, including command line familiarity, and experience with Docker
• Familiarity with HTML and CSS
• Understanding of cryptographic keys and their role in the security and authenticity of VCs

2. We need to make information about the advantages of LERs as VCs more accessible to stakeholders. Many issuers, learners, or verifiers may not be aware of the difference between VCs and web hosted badges. Why are they a better option? Are they trustworthy? Do they involve blockchain? The decision to adopt new technologies is most often multilateral, requiring the endorsement from developers as well as program managers and directors. Pointing non-technical decision makers to deep technical documentation can be distracting or overwhelming.

For example, issuers should be made aware of potential metadata recipes. Open Badges 3.0 offers an extensive list of data properties that can be included in a credential. Though it is not necessary for issuers to have comprehensive knowledge of all data contained in an OBv3 credential, awareness of the options for metadata properties and rationale for or against including a data element can allow them to make decisions about credential design that can make credentials more meaningful for learners.

One of the most important features of the VC data model is its decentralized nature. The VC model is intentionally designed to verify credentials without any reference to a centralized server to look up information in a database. This is the aspect of the VC model that preserves privacy and protects the credentials from the risk of being lost if the server or database goes offline for any reason. Our experience from these and other deployment projects has proven that there is a clear need for access to simple language that is accessible to both engineers as well as nontechnical decision makers that describes the differences between the VC model and traditional web hosted platforms and the advantages of the former.

The DCC has begun to address this issue by including “tech-lite” documentation on our wiki. This is aligned with the T3 Innovation Networks’ LER Toolkit. By providing information on the value propositions of issuing data rich, learner controlled credentials, we can build confidence in LERs as VCs for learners, issuers, and employers.

3. More tools are needed to support employer adoption of VCs. In two cases, the project team was able to interview potential consumers of the issued credentials, one of which was actively looking to recruit job candidates. In both cases, the verifiers saw value in the tamper evidence and security of the credential. However, there was not a clear process for how to integrate VCs into the HR platforms and human processes that they currently use for recruitment and hiring.

One employer noted that filling certain roles in their industry requires an applicant to complete a technical assessment, which they could not with confidence waive if the applicant had a VC describing competency in these technical skills. They also expressed an interest in functionality which would allow them to search their client base for applicants with desired qualifications.

Organizations issuing LERs as VCs at this juncture are considered early adopters. Some may reasonably prefer to issue VCs in parallel with their former credential method. However, in order to scale adoption, issuing organizations must be willing to develop a plan to shift entirely to a VC system. As advocates for learner controlled, data rich VCs, the LER community should continue to work to illuminate value propositions for issuers, building confidence in their decision to innovate.

The enthusiasm of the learners who participated in the end to end pilots indicates that the shift from a web based to VC system is worthwhile. However, the true value, not only for learners, but for employers and other verifiers and stakeholders, can only be achieved if the technology allows for convenient, secure, and meaningful exchange of skills and abilities. With the lessons from these deployments, the DCC plans to continue to collaborate and codesign technology and tools that promote adoption, empower stakeholders with knowledge, and provide replicable models for issuers and employers.

Originally published on the Digital Credentials Consortium blog. Housed at MIT Open Learning, the Digital Credentials Consortium is a group of higher education institutions in North America and Europe that is building an infrastructure and tools for verifiable digital academic credentials to support the education systems of the future.

Surfacing barriers to adoption was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.