Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC)
Blockchain for academic issuance and validation
The project
Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) is a body created in 1972 by agreement of the participating governments of the Caribbean Community that provides educational certifications in 16 English-speaking Caribbean countries and territories of the Commonwealth.
Academic records have been managed in an analogical way on paper. Therefore, candidates depend on the issuing institutions to certify their achievements throughout their life. These processes are often long and tedious, it can take weeks or months and involve many hours of human work that usually result in delays.
When there is a combination of records from different entities external to CXC, it can be the case that if they go bankrupt, lose their records or are destroyed due to disasters, candidates may have no way to verify their achievements. In this sense, it is important for the Caribbean countries to establish the necessary enabling technologies, that is, the “infrastructure” that can ensure the smooth transfer of skills in a safe and easily independently verifiable format.
The biggest challenge in the process to obtain the Recognition Certification is the time required to validate the certification. The Caribbean countries have expressed their concern about the implementation of the CSME regarding the “free circulation of people”.
Challenges
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Optimizing the certification validation process -
Reducing verification and validation times -
Ensuring the digital identity of people and entities
The solution
Blockchain technology allows the creation of a decentralized and immutable information register where the data can be trusted and validated. Blockchain networks can be used to record cryptographic evidence of the digital identity of entities and people and the validity of the digital credentials issued to them.
Blockchain is a tool to achieve these goals. As a general ledger of transactions spread across hundreds or thousands of nodes around the world, credentials that use blockchain as a secure anchor of trust are verifiable anywhere, by anyone, and can be directly owned by their recipients.
The objective of this consultancy has been to build a standardized but customizable digital solution that leverages blockchain technology for the issuance and verification of academic certificates and data associated with CXC candidates, as well as to develop the necessary capabilities to add new countries to the Regional Blockchain Education Network.
The result
A flexible, scalable and secure platform has been developed and allows the evolution of the CXC Blockchain electronic certification as the technology and strategy of the institution advances. It has adapted to the trends of mobile and smart devices. We can establish the following conclusions of the project:
- Development of a platform and an application managed by CXC for the issuance, management, presentation and verification of credentials.
- Integration of the platform with the CXC ORS system for issuing credentials.
- It has been tested with 400 candidates and entities from three countries: Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
- It allows to issue CXC certificates for candidates over 18 years of age.