Europass Digital Credentials | Interoperability
|
These pages are being updated. Additional documentation will be added on a monthly basis throughout 2020. |
Europass will also enable people to receive Europass Digital Credentials, which are trust-worthy, digital records of learning achievements such as qualifications and diplomas. Europass Digital Credentials are signed by an issuing education and training institution and so have the same legal value as paper-based credentials. Receiving Europass credentials is fast and simple.
Acting on the evident need to shift from paper-based certificates to digitally-signed credentials, the EU is stepping in to assist. The Commission is currently working on the Europass Digital Credentials Infrastructure which organisations can implement for free to issue digital credentials. The implementation will allow organisations to issue qualifications (like a degree or vocational training), apprenticeships or participation certificates efficiently through a secure, trustworthy and fraud-resistant digital infrastructure.
The Europass Digital Credential Infrastructure is a set of standards, services and software which allows institutions to issue digital, tamper-proof qualifications and other learning credentials within the European Education Area. With it learners, employers, education and training providers and other authorised bodies have a simple and trustworthy way of verifying the validly and authenticity of digital credentials.
Benefits
- Issue digital credentials: Reduce the cost of issuing secure credentials, eliminate administrative work involved in verifying credentials, and get the automatic support of EU recognition instruments and data privacy best practices.
- Receive digital credentials: Be more efficient in processing recruitment applications as digital credentials are standardised and paperless, automatically detect tampered or fake credentials, and increase the transparency of credentials.
- Integrate tools from the European Commission to issue, store, verify and view credentials in your existing software in a format supported across all EU and EEA Member States and compatible with other wallet services.
More information about the various standards developed for EDCI will be added throughout 2020.
The Commission has developed the Europass Learning Model to describe learning opportunities, qualifications, credentials and accreditations. The model aims to capture the results of any non-formal, informal and formal learning across Europe. It is designed to provide a single format to describe certificates of attendance, examination results, degrees and diplomas, diploma supplements, professional certifications, employer recommendations and any other kind of claims that are related to learning.
The EDCI Data Model is an extension of the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model expressed as XML/XSD, for the purposes of providing a standardised format of describing learning within the European Union and European Economic Area.
The Data model is also aligned with the ELMO/EMREX Standard
|
Check |
Nature of Check |
GREEN (PASS) |
RED (FAIL) |
GRAY () |
|
Format Has the credential been issued according to the standard specified for that credential-type? |
|
This credential is technically valid. |
The credential is corrupted and/or unreadable. The credential is missing [property] required field.
The data in [property] field is not in the correct format. |
N/A |
|
Seal Has the credential been tampered with? |
|
The credential is Sealed. This credential has not been tampered with since it was issued by [issuer] on [date]. |
The seal of the credential has been broken. This document may have been tampered with. |
This credential contains no eSeal. Its provenance and authenticity cannot be guaranteed.
The eSeal on this credential has expired. Its provenance and authenticity cannot be guaranteed. |
|
Owner Is the person presenting the credential the owner? |
|
This credential was issued to the wallet owner. |
This credential was issued to [credential name/dob], but the wallet holder is listed as [walletholder name/dob]. |
The identity of the credential-owner has not been verified. |
|
Revocation Has the credential been revoked? |
|
This credential has not been revoked. |
This credential was revoked on [date] for [reason] by [revoker]. |
Europass was unable to access a revocation list. |
|
Accreditation Is the awarding body authorised to issue the credential? |
|
The issuing organisation is legally authorised to issue this kind of credential. |
The issuing organisation is not authorised to issue this kind of credential. Please report this to your national authorities. |
[country] does not supply data to check whether the issuer is authorised to issue this kind of credential. |
|
Validity Is the credential still valid? |
(a) check against expiry information contained with credential |
The credential is still valid. |
The credential expired on [date]. |
N/A |
Version 1.0 of the data model gives an overview of:
- the expression of learning processes in terms of learning specifications, opportunities and credentials
- the expression of learning in terms of activities, assessments and achievements
- the extension of the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model for Europass Credentials, including fields for description of the issuer and the credential subject
- the expression of concepts for describing learning opportunities
- the expression of concepts for describing accreditation
|
Subject |
Controlled vocabulary |
|
Standard List of Accreditation Types |
|
|
Standard List of Assessment Types |
|
|
Communication Channel Types |
Standard List of Communication Channel Types |
|
Standard List of Communication Channel Usage Types |
|
|
Standard List of Content Encoding Types |
|
|
Standard List of Credential Types |
|
|
Standard List of Educational Credit Systems |
|
|
Standard List of Entitlement Status |
|
|
Standard List of Entitlement Types |
|
|
Standard List of Learning Activity Types |
|
|
Standard List of Learning Opportunity Types |
|
|
Standard List of Learning Schedule Types |
|
|
Standard List of Learning Setting Types |
|
|
Media Types |
Standard List of Media Types |
|
Standard List of Methods Of Supervision And Verification |
|
|
Standard List of Modes Of Learning and Assessment |
|
|
Standard List of Target Groups |
|
|
Standard List of Verification Statuses |
|
|
Standard List of Verification Types |
|
|
EURES_EQF |
|
|
ESCO Skills Competence Type |
|
|
QDR List of Qualification Frameworks |
|
|
Qualification Topics |
|
|
International Standard Classification of Education, Fields of Education and Training (ISCED FoET) 2013 |
The EDCI is made up of the following web-services:
- EDCI Issuer allow users to issue digital credentials
- EDCI Wallet stores and shares credentials
- EDCI Viewer allows users to view, export and verify credentials
- EDCI Accreditation Database stores accreditation records for institutions
The European Commission provides the EDCI Issuer service free of charge as a web-app to any institution that does not wish to develop/install/purchase their own issuing software. It implements the EDCI Credential Standard. The EDCI Issuer is capable of taking structured data about awarded credentials, and issuing thousands of compliant digitally-signed credentials.
The EDCI Viewer is made up of three modules, namely the:
- EDCI Renderer which will allow a credential owner or other third party (e.g. an employer) to view a credential in a graphical format indicated by the awarding body;
- EDCI Verifier which will run the checks described in the wallet & verification standard against the credential; and
- EDCI Exporter which will allow conversion of the credential into other formats such as PDF or open badges.
A developer playground which allows users to preview, view, verify and export digital credentials which are under development can be accessed here.
The primary purpose of the EDCI Accreditation Database a data source that would allow the provenance of qualifications to be ascertained and verified. The database comprises records on:
- Institutional Licencing applied at the level of educational organisations. Institutional Licencing implies permission for the institution to operate, and is awarded by Public Authorities or delegates thereof.
- Programme Licencing applied at the level of one or several programmes. Institutional Licencing implies permission for an institution to provide a specific programme, and is awarded by Public Authorities or delegates thereof.
Data is supplied to the Accreditation Database via the QDR.
The RestAPI for the EDCI Accreditation Database will be documented using Swagger and the link will be provided here.
This page is being updated. Keep in touch to learn more about the Revocation List.
The EDCI wallet is a backend service that receives credentials from the issuer, stores them and serves them to wallet front-ends such as the Europass or the EDCI Viewer. It also serves 'share' requests to other systems.
Rest-APIs are documented using swagger, and are available for our playground environment here.
Access to the production wallets is granted on request by the Digital Credentials support team at EDCsupport@ext-ec-europa.eu.
This page will being updated. Keep in touch to learn more about the EDCI Developer tools.
For more information on EDCI, please email us at this address: EDCsupport@ext-ec-europa.eu