Introduction
Between February 2021 and February 2023, the Ministry for Digitalisation, Infrachain, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) have partnered to develop the EBSILUX project.
Co-funded by the European Union, the EBSILUX project integrates Luxembourg into the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). EBSI is part of the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP), a partnership between 29 countries (EU Member States, Norway and Liechtenstein) and the European Commission.
Objectives
EBSI uses blockchain to build cross-border services and enable public administrations to digitise and issue or certify documents that are the standard way of verifying information about people (identity cards, work permits, driving licences, diplomas, etc.), legal entities and goods (origin of containers, product safety, etc.).
EBSILUX implements a European EBSI use case at national level, leading to the completion and functioning of the internal market in support of the competitiveness of the European economy. The project will create new trans-European services. More specifically, citizens, administrations and businesses from Luxembourg and other EU Member States will benefit from Luxembourg's participation in the EBSI project and from the collaboration with other EU Member States. This project aims to create the same level of trust in digital services as exists today in other public services.
First use case
Luxembourg has made student mobility, multilingualism and international cooperation one of its priorities. An interoperable and cross-border solution is therefore essential. EBSILUX aims to develop a solution to provide digital higher education diplomas whose authenticity can be verified automatically. Digital diplomas will allow the sharing of reliable information on the qualifications of their holders in the form of structured data rather than just unverifiable PDF documents.
The use case is based on digital identity, the blockchain and the automatic verification mechanism of digital credentials/presentations. EBSILUX will thus enable citizens to become familiar with the concepts of digital wallets. In this sense, this project is an important first step in creating the necessary infrastructure for the exchange of data from trusted sources between the public and private sector in a cross-border environment.
Benefits
The diplomas use case ensures that a diploma has been issued by a given university and helps to create trust between schools/universities, students and employers in digitalized interactions. Fraudsters who use falsified diplomas damage the reputation of schools and universities. The diplomas use case thus aims to eliminate the risk of fraud. In addition, employers will be able to instantly check the validity of their applicants' diplomas, which speeds up the recruitment process.
The diplomas use case is a first step towards giving every citizen control over their data and having a place to receive, manage and share all types of digital certificates that will constitute their digital identity. The standardised exchange of structured data will increase the quality of the data and save a lot of time in administrative procedures. Finally, the diplomas use case will contribute to student mobility and international cooperation in Luxembourg.
Major events
The EBSILUX Designathon in May 2022 was organized in the premises of the Luxembourg GovTech Lab and brought together 16 national and international participants who work or have an interest in the EBSI project and particularly the "use case diplomas" project. During the event, 4 teams worked according to the "design thinking" methodology to develop concepts to help educational and human resources institutions to be ready to adopt European digital diplomas issued by the credential use case, and to be able to use these concepts to expand the accessibility and use of these digital degrees. At the end of the event, the concepts were publicly presented to a panel of experts.
As part of the Blockchain Week in October 2022, organised by the Luxembourg Blockchain Lab, the team organised a Demo Day to show the public the results of the project through the demonstration of the issuance of a digital diploma for the University of Luxembourg, whose authenticity can be verified using EBSI. Viewers were able to watch a diploma issued in a digital wallet, the presentation of the diploma to a potential employer, as well as the verification of the diploma by the latter. Subsequently, EBSILUX also published a report summarizing the project's findings, which is available on the project website.
Conclusion
EBSI’s multi-university pilot and the EBSILUX prototype demonstrate the feasibility of using verifiable credentials and blockchain technology as a basis for digitally verifiable diplomas. The prototype allows the University of Luxembourg to automatically issue diplomas in the form of a verifiable credential. University students can store and make use of their verifiable credentials via a web-based EBSILUX wallet and share a verifiable presentation of their diploma credential with a verifier. Verifiers can digitally verify the authenticity of the credential via the EBSILUX verifier system and with the help of information stored on EBSI’s trusted registries. Overall, the EBSILUX system demonstrates how digital wallets and blockchain can help to increase the efficiency and reliability of diploma issuing and verification processes.
Several challenges remain to achieve EU-wide adoption. As an initial step, EBSI is currently developing additional features such as revocation, which will be essential to ensure reliable verification of digital diplomas. Furthermore, EBSI plans to bring its diploma use cases into production and make it available to university students across Europe. In doing so, ensuring interoperability among the various EBSI projects will be a crucial aspect and critical step for enabling large-scale evaluations of the solutions. In the future, important steps for the adaption of EBSI’s solution will be the availability and interoperability of digital wallets. Ensuring interoperability between EBSI and the upcoming revised eIDAS regulation as well as the upcoming European Digital Identity Wallets may help to scale EBSI’s solution and build the bridge between different digital diploma solutions, such as EBSI and Europass, and other use cases that will require a digital wallet. Moreover, large-scale adoption of EBSI-compliant diplomas will require simple verifier tools that can be easily deployed in various institution.
The following whitepaper provides insights from EBSI’s multi-university pilot and the EBSILUX project, in particular.
Source: www.ebsilux.lu