Singaporean Government’s ‘OpenCerts’ To Issue Graduate Certificates On Blockchain

By KryptoMoney Staff May 4, 2019

Singapore | OpenCerts | Graduation | Blockchain | Certification

Under the initiative by the Singapore government-level project called OpenCerts, students from 18 educational institutions in the country will receive blockchain-based digital certificates starting in 2019, according to local tech news agency Tech in Asia reports on May 3.

OpenCerts is co-developed by the Ministry of Education (MOE), Government Technology Agency (GovTech), along with national educational movement SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and higher learning institution Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP). Powered by the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, this open-source platform plans to provide a reliable way to issue and verify certificates, boost the security of data, the efficiency of issuance and validation processes, and reduce costs associated with traditional paper certificates.

Patrice Choong, Director of NP’s Sandbox by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Office, stated that the said decision is taken due to a productivity issue, as quoted by Southeast Asian news channel Channel NewsAsia. Choong further elaborated that the platform’s adoption skips over two important steps otherwise necessary, i.e. the need for a physically leveraged document and the need for verification requests.

Reportedly, GovTech and NP piloted the OpenCerts in 2018 with the first batch of digital certificates issued to NP graduates. The report states the institution issues around 10,000 physical copies of certificates each year, with all of them being printed and stamped, while verification requests from employers reportedly number about 2,000.

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