The Future of EUDI Wallet in Education: Europe and beyond!

On October 14th, a webinar on The Future of EUDI Wallet in Education: Europe and Beyond! was held, organized by European Campus Card Association (ECCA) and 3CL Foundation. SmartDegrees presented the opportunity that its University Smart Portfolio use case offers for European interoperability, along with two other use cases. This was preceded by a presentation from 3CL Foundation highlighting the key relevance of EUDI Wallet in education.

EUDI Wallet will be crucial in the digital transformation of many sectors, particularly higher education, where it provides an excellent opportunity for student cards and their interoperability between different institutions in various countries.

ECCA is an association of European universities specializing in student identification and authentication. Its objective is to provide a European eID that offers interoperability, connectivity, and mobility for students. To this end, it has promoted the standardization of the formats and processes associated with campus cards since its foundation in 2002, in coordination with providers and other stakeholders, hence this webinar. Furthermore, it maintains a close relationship with other related institutions such as the National Association of Campus Card Users (NACCU), which represents universities and colleges in the United States.

Verifiable credentials and the EUDI Wallet standard facilitate the portability of degrees and credentials between countries

Vicente Prior, CEO of SmartDegrees, described the turning point that Web3 represents in the evolution of campus cards by eliminating intermediaries and empowering the students as cardholders, supported by the standards and initiatives of the European Commission, particularly eIDAS2 and EUDIW. The University Smart Portfolio platform issues verifiable credentials, certifying students’ academic credentials, in a digital portfolio that facilitates interoperability with other institutions. This is thanks to its compliance with EUDIW, allowing students to include their credentials in their personal EUDI Wallet, thus anticipating the European citizen’s right to a digital identity by 2026. The goal is to enhance the value of students in the job market and facilitate their mobility (growing, 23% by 2030), while also supporting universities in their digital transformation.

The model and user experience have been validated at the University of Design, Innovation and Technology (UDIT) and also have the support of ECCA, the Sicomoro Foundation, and Hassan II University of Casablanca (UH2C) to ensure its scalability.

European Campus Card Association

The SmartDegrees team, prior to its founding, has been in close contact with ECCA since 2008 through Santander Universities, at the recommendation of the Observatorio TUI of University of Cantabria (OTTIUC), one of its founding members. With the emergence of blockchain, the need for campus cards and identities to be based on this technology became clear. Jesús Ruiz, CTO, presented this at ECCA‘s 2019 annual conference in Linz, Austria, given the impetus the European Commission was giving to what is now EUDI Wallet.