Starting point and problem
Students must regularly prove their student status - when using the library, for access to courses or (online) examinations or for obtaining diplomas. These diplomas in turn are an important - if not the most important - entry requirement for further education and employment. Today, students and graduates of the University of Zurich receive a so-called legitimation card on paper or certificates in the form of PDF files, which are only partially forgery-proof and not very practical. Universities have to keep the paper certificates for ten years and retrieve them on request, which leads to considerable manual effort.
PoC set-up and how our solution works
In an open innovation project with the University of Zurich, the opportunities offered by Procivis One technology and a UZH wallet were tested with students, professors and employers over a period of six months. This UZH wallet from Procivis can be used to receive, store and manage transcripts, certificates and student IDs in the form of verifiable credentials (VC) and present them on request. It was particularly important to find out the acceptance of the stakeholders with regard to such a solution.
The credentials are issued at the so-called desk. The university staff independently selected the verification scheme or the necessary attributes for the verification and entered the student's data into a mask.
After confirmation, a QR code was generated, which the students scanned with the Wallet app. As soon as they had confirmed that they wanted to receive the certificate, they found it in their app. There, students could receive, store, manage and potentially (on request) share multiple credentials with third parties - inside and outside the university. This interoperability is particularly relevant due to the high level of mobility in the education sector.
In the PoC, students had to show their UZH wallet in order to be admitted to an event. The application of a student with a digital certificate to Swisscom was also simulated.
Result and outlook
The Procivis solution enables forgery-proof and user-friendly output formats for transcripts of records and certificates. Student data is protected through privacy by design, data economy and decentralized data storage. The university no longer has to store paper transcripts for years and to do the manual work associated with checking degrees and grades. The students and graduates involved in the project were also very interested in the solution. The integration into a simulated application process was tested with Swisscom and was also successful.
