Germany joining the EMREX network!

Michael Lierath and Arn Wassmann, HIS

German HEIs are able to join the EMREX network! The student information system HISinOne enables the transfer of incoming and outgoing result records via EMREX. Students who earned credits at another university can easily import the results to HISinOne through the use of EMREX. To accomplish this, the student just has to sign in into both systems and initiate the data transfer. Once the data has been imported, the imported results may be reviewed by the student and a staff member will be able to verify and acknowledge the results. The transfer could also be done in a national setting using the same protocol, exchanging result data between German HEIs. If any additional recognition processes are required, PIM (platform for international student mobility) may be used to implement these. In 2022, penetration tests were conducted on the EMREX implementation of HISinOne for both EMP and EMC. The tests were passed with good results, proving the strong and robust base provided by the protocol specification of EMREX. The University of Freiburg is currently piloting the use of EMREX. The University of Education Ludwigsburg has also registered a test system. Another two test systems are run by HIS eG. All other HIS universities are also invited to join the EMREX network and utilize the result transfer through EMREX.

University of Talca, Chile – First productive implementation of EMREX in Latin America! Anne Sennhenn

The University of Göttingen, Germany (already an EMREX member since 2019) and the University of Talca, Chile share a long history of close collaboration in study & teaching, including a double degree programme and a lively student exchange. Being able to share educational data and thereby reduce significant barriers for international student mobility is of great value for the students, teachers and administration. As part of close collaboration and shared ambition the University of Göttingen and the University of Talca implemented the digital student data transfer between both institutions using ELMO/ EMREX. Thus, the University of Talca has applied for full membership at EMREX network and will be the first full member in Latin America.  Facilitating international student mobility with digital services with focus on EMREX as the user centered solution for electronic transfer of student achievement data was further presented by a team of the University of Göttingen together with counterparts from University of Talca at the assembly of 30 Chilean universities on the 24th of November 2022 in Chile. The presentation was part of the agenda of the internationalization committee of the Chilean university’s rectors conference (Consejo de Rectores de Universidades Chilenas, Comisión de Internacionalización). As follow up to this presentation several higher education institutions (HEI) in Chile showed interest in implementing international exchange of student data applying international standards.  A technical workshop for IT units of the interested HEIs in Chile will be offered by the UGOE & UTalca in April 2023. Looking forward to continuing collaboration with HEI in Chile & Latin America!

Bettina Bube, Anne Sennhenn and Nils Gehrke from the University of Göttingen presenting EMREX in Chile

The Digital Credentials for Europe project (DC4EU)

A few of the EMREX members are involved in the project DC4EU which is funded under the call DIGITAL-2022-DEPLOY-02. The objective of the project is to create a European digital identity wallet as described in the Amendment of the regulation 910/2014 called Procedure 2021/0136/COD (eIDAS 2.0). The wallet will be able to hold different types of information but our scope is of course to handle educational data. The project consists of 82 organizations from 23 countries and the budget for the project is almost 20 million euros. Web page is available at https://dc4eu.eu.

Groningen Declaration Network

The Groningen Declaration Network (GDN) had its annual conference in Groningen in October 2022. It was 3 eventful days in the city where the organization started. After many years of service, the Executive Director Herman de Leeuw handed over the administration to the new Director Joanne Duklas. The latest newsletter with more information can be found here: https://www.groningendeclaration.org/2023/01/26/newsletter-january-2023/.

Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for EMREX

In order to keep up with the growing international demands in the field of information and security technology, the EMREX Executive Committee has decided to appoint a CTO for EMREX (including the ELMO Data Standard). This CTO position has been filled by Mirko Stanic. Mirko has already rendered invaluable services to EMREX/ELMO in the renewal and reorganisation of the EMREX/ELMO Github, as well as in the creation of the ELM-ELMO conversion table (in collaboration with DG EMPL of the European Commission). Welcome on board, Mirko!

ELMO/ELM alignment – and what is the current status

Guido Bacharach As already reported in the September EMREX Newsletter, the group developing the new European data format standard European Learning Model (ELM – formerly Europass Learning Model) on behalf of DG EMPL of the European Commission, together with the EMREX Executive Committee and its new CTO Mirko Stanic, was able to establish interoperability between the data standards ELMO 1.7 (currently in release) and ELM 3.0 (expected to be released during the first half of 2023). A mapping table between both systems has been created, refined in the meantime and is in final quality control. After successful acceptance, this mapping table will then be the basis for ELMO-ELM converters, which e.g. the European project DC4EU plans to create. With such a converter, it would then be possible to create a so-called “coupling concept”, as the figure below shows. With such a realised concept, an interoperable ecosystem could be created in which ELMO as well as ELM data, converted accordingly, could be used by all currently important transport systems (EWP, Europass, EMREX, EBSI, …).

Interoperable ecosystem with coupling concept

Vitnemålsportalen

Geir Vangen, Sikt The Norwegian Diploma Registry, or Vitnemålsportalen as it is known in Norwegian, is the Norwegian node of EMREX made and maintained by Sikt. Vitnemålsportalen was built in parallel to the EMREX project and put into production in January 2017.Vitnemålsportalen includes not only diplomas for qualifications, but all results from Norwegian higher education. The service was built to give citizens access to their results from higher education to share with employers and other third parties. There was a focus on countering diploma forgery, simplifying the process of sharing result data and enabling third parties to digitise and automate their processes. Sikt has cooperated with the business community and a number of organizations have made integrations to Vitnemålsportalen using the EMREX protocol. Most recruitment systems used in Norway have been integrated into Vitnemålsportalen, this enables job applicants to share their results in an effective and trustworthy way. Today Vitnemålsportalen is used in recruitment systems, education admission systems, licenses and authorizations applications and more. The amount of users sharing their data through Vitnemålsportalen has grown from 33,500 shares in its first year in production to just under 258,000 shares in 2021. Of the about 258,000 shares in 2021, just about 60,500 of them were through EMREX. Production of paper Transcript of Records has been reduced to a minimum, and now the paper version of diplomas from higher education institutions are being phased out.Vitnemålsportalen covers 100% of higher education, including complete sets of data back to the 90s for most institutions and even back to the 60s for some universities. From 2023 there are plans to include results from upper secondary school, almost complete data sets from 1999. More information about Vitnemålsportalen can be found at https://www.vitnemalsportalen.no/english/.

EMREX test users

Mathias Hjertholm, Sikt The test users for the diploma registry are updated in the EMREX demo Using the Norwegian EMP to test your EMC.

ELMO workshop on recognition

Geir Vangen, SiktSikt – Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research – arranged a two day ELMO workshop to discuss adding results of recognition to the ELMO format. The background for this is that the Norwegian diploma portal plans to present results to applicants for recognition at HkDir (earlier NOKUT), the Norwegian Enic-Naric organisation. There is a general interest in the Enic-Naric community to standardize the outcome of the recognition processes. In addition to results of recognition, this goal also to some extent aims to include entitlements such as professional entitlements like the right to practice as a nurse. NOKUT, who in addition to general recognition, also issues licenses for teachers based on foreign teacher training will require entitlements be able to deliver all recognitions in ELMO format. The workshop also discussed more specific recognition done at the universities, exempting subjects based on education from other universities.The result of the workshop includes a list of the data elements that need to be covered by ELMO, and some ideas for the structure of these data. The follow-up work will be to suggest solutions on how this can be done in ELMO. The solution should cover both general recognition done by Enic-Naric organizations, issuance of licences for work, and more specific recognition done at the HEIs. In this context, we also look to ELM 3.0 to ensure that the formats do not deviate too much from each other to ensure compliance between the formats. We would like to thank participants from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany for the fruitful discussions during this workshop.

ELMO 1.7 released

Version 1.7 of the ELMO-format has now been released in Github. It contains smaller changes, new license and editorial changes due to name changes of NCP to EMP. It will not break backwards compatibility. It is available at https://github.com/emrex-eu/elmo-schemas.

EMREX and ELMO Strategic Goals

On 13 September 2022, the EMREX Executive Committee (EMREX EC) met in the northern German city of Hanover to discuss the strategic future of EMREX and ELMO. The reason for this discussion was to pause in the current successful but also challenging development of EMREX and ELMO and to ask ourselves in which direction EMREX and ELMO should move in the future in order to be able to use the scarce resources around EMREX and ELMO effectively and efficiently. Initially, it was assumed that the strategic development of EMREX and ELMO should be linked or basically considered independently of each other, since EMREX may also transport other data structures than ELMO and ELMO can also be used and is used by other transport systems, such as EWP. The instruments of classical strategy development were used. The mission of EMREX and ELMO was once again clarified and put into written words. In addition, the stakeholders as well as the competitors and possibly opponents of EMREX and ELMO in the current situation were identified. The EMREX EC agreed on these strategic foundations as well as a basic vision for EMREX and ELMO. The mission and vision on which the further development of the strategy was based can be found here:

1.     Mission and benefits of EMREX (Mission – why we exist, what we do, where…)

EMREX is an international (European) data protocol that can be implemented with simple means to exchange education data (with focus on educational data from Higher Educational Institutions (HEI)), between two digital systems in a digitally machine-processable and GDPR-compliant way. The benefit of EMREX, with its electronic data exchange solution, is to empower individuals to control their own student data and exchange throughout lifespan, across borders for various purposes in a GDPR-compliant way.

2.     Vision for EMREX (Vision = idealistic emotional future)

The benefit of EMREX, with its electronic data exchange solution, is to empower individuals to control their own student data and exchange throughout lifespan, across borders for various purposes in a GDPR-compliant way. EMREX is used for various purposes, not limited to educational information, in many countries. Regarding student data the goal is that all partners in the Erasmus network use it but also major partner countries in the world, like the US, China, Japan, etc. Regarding other purposes EMREX is used by different actors that contribute to digitalization, for the benefit of the data owner. It is constructed to empower individuals to control their own student data and exchange throughout lifespan, across borders for various purposes in a GDPR-compliant way.

3.     Mission and benefits of ELMO

ELMO is a digital data structure based on the XML standards ELM-AI (EN 15981) and MLO (EN 15982), with which education data (with a focus on tertiary education) can be prepared in a structured and machine-processable manner. ELMO is currently used by many European countries with the digital systems EMREX and EWP and thus forms a de facto standard. The data model describes primarily diplomas, diploma supplements, assessments, and transcript of records.

4.     Vision for ELMO

It is the EMREX EC’s vision that ELMO converges with other data standards to cover all of EMREX’s current use cases as well as future use-cases; such as Primary, secondary and tertiary vocational education as well as certificates, Recognition of results from a Recognition Authority, and Vocational Entitlements in addition to the use cases of EWP systems and other European Schemes like Europass and SDG. Based on this understanding of the mission and vision of EMREX and ELMO, the EMREX EC agreed on the following strategic goals of EMREX and ELMO for the next 3-5 years: 

5.     Strategic Goals for the next 3-5 years 

5.1. Strategic Goals for EMREX

• EMREX will become a leading international transport system for any education data (not only tertiary education) of any data structure (not only ELMO).
• EMREX will focus on business or use cases that guarantee a large regional spread on the one hand and a high degree of utilization on the other (e.g. enrolment/admission to universities in Germany, recognition of educational achievements by ENIC/NARIC organizations, data exchange between the Baltic and Scandinavian states).
• EMREX will be recognized in the European Commission as a leading transport system for educational data through participation in EU projects.
• EMREX is accepted and lived/implemented by the SDG as the sectoral solution for the education space.
• EMREX will support one or more wallet solutions.
• EMREX Governance Strategy:
  • EMREX will have a professional governance with sufficient resources to ensure efficient development and operation of EMREX.
  • The currently used governance model “Self-appointed council or board” (see https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/understanding-open-source-governance-models) will be maintained for the time being.
  • The EMREX Executive Board is to be seen as the product owner of the EMREX product.
• Long-term strategy for the EMREX Community:
  • The EMREX Community becomes a think-tank on lifelong education.

5.2. Strategic Goals for ELMO

• ELMO will be used as a standard for educational data (especially for transcript-of-records.
• ELMO will be kept ELM and, as far as possible, SDG compatible.
• ELMO will be given a professional governance with sufficient resources to guarantee an efficient further development of ELMO (especially in the effective handling of issues).

From the perspective of the EMREX EC, these strategic goals should set the direction for the further development of EMREX and ELMO in the next 3-5 years. Based on these goals, the EMREX EC, but also the rest of the EMREX/ELMO community, is called upon to define and launch activities and projects to support the goals. These strategic goals are of course first and foremost a proposal from the EMREX EC to the EMREX/ ELMO community for discussion. Do you recognize yourself and your own goals that you pursue with EMREX and ELMO in these goals? Are you missing any important strategic goals, or do you disagree with some of the goals? We look forward to your feedback at info@emrex.eu.

EMREX General Assembly in Göttingen 31 May 2022

The 2022 EMREX Annual Assembly was held on May 31st. This year it was held as a physical meeting in the historical city of Göttingen in Germany with courtesy of Georg-August Universität. The yearly report from 2021 was presented and accepted, just as the yearly plan for 2022. The election of the Executive Committee resulted in some new faces so now the EC consists of:

• Igor Drvodelic, Croatia, • Tor Fridell, Sweden, • Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz, Poland, • Jan-Joost Norder, the Netherlands, • Kimmo Rautio, Finland, • Geir M Vangen, Norway, • Arn Wassman, Germany.

One agenda item was changes in the statutes, demanded by the decision last year to move the EMREX Registry (EMREG) into the EWP Registry. Some parts became obsolete by this and some editorial changes were needed. At the meeting the following new members were welcomed into the EMREX User Group:

• Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, • Pedagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, Germany, • Pescheck, the Netherlands, • Supratix, Germany.

All documents can be found at https://zgfreestyle.hr/emrex/documents/.

ELMO Workshop in Göttingen 31 May 2022

On 31 May 2022 the EMREX Executive Committee hosted an hybrid ELMO workshop at the University of Göttingen. In a very intensive and long session we discussed many changes and additions to the ELMO standard. The discussion showed that it is not easy to find common ground easily with a standard that is being used in so many countries nowadays. At the end of the day we could only agree on one issue out of 7 proposals. Does this mean that it was a bad workshop? Not at all, because it showed us again how valuable and important it is to talk with experts about the proposed changes. And we agreed that we need invest more time and research in the proposals. For example a standard template, so we can more easily discuss the necessity of a change. We would once more want to say thank the University of Göttingen for their hospitality. All discussed issues are available in GitHub in the EMREX repository. Please visit: https://github.com/emrex-eu/elmo-schemas/issues/

Onsite participants of the ELMO workshop at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen

EMREX at EUNIS 2022

EMREX was represented at the 2022 EUNIS conference. After two years of online meetings it was held physically in Göttingen, Germany. EMREX held a presentation titled Interoperability of educational data demands standards which highlighted the problem that there are competing standards for educational data in Europe and in the world. It was interesting in that way that it was not the only presentation the stated this fact. There seems to be an awareness that we should work together more and not create own solutions for everything. EUNIS presentation and a full paper issued in European Journal of Higher Education IT (issue 2022-1) can be found here: https://www.eunis.org/eunis2022/sessions/interoperability-of-educational-data-demands-standards/.

ELMO in GitHub

In 2022 EMREX organization has transitioned its documentation to a unified GitHub account which hosts the ELMO schemas and EMREX standard with examples. The new front page features a summary of all the repositories with direct links. The sample implementations of EMP and EMC have been updated to reflect the new naming scheme and the presentations from previous seminars and meetings have merged into the presentation’s repository. The new GitHub page is now verified which helps increase its visibility in search engines and a contact e-mail has been added as well. The changes have also been extended to the standard description, glossary, and implementation guide, which now all include extensive descriptions about the EMREX protocol and all the necessary information, which new implementers need to get started. This novel approach provides the community with a sole source of all code and documentation while at the same time providing the traceability of changes in the EMREX standard as it continues to evolve and adapt to new usage scenarios. Visit EMREX repository in GitHub: https://github.com/emrex-eu.

ELMO in GitHub

On 25 July 2022, the ELMO and ELM technical teams had a fruitful meeting during which they confirmed a comprehensive alignment between ELMO and ELM v.3 (recently published for feedback on Github). It was determined that all ELMO fields can be mapped to ELM fields with the following exceptions:

• Attachment fields: These do not exist in ELM at the moment but will now be included for the final version of ELM version 3. • Diploma Supplement fields: ELMO uses simple string fields here, ELM mostly controlled-list fields. If the string fields are not filled properly, these fields might not be mapped in the ELM controlled list fields.

So, the current status is the following:

• ELMO is mappable to ELM version 3 in the current version without change under the above restrictions. • ELM data could be mappable to the EWP and EMREX ecosystem via an appropriate ELM schema (the schema would still need to be created). • Regarding an information from DG EMPL on SDG, ELM should become part of the SDG data model for structured education data. The DGs of the European Commission are in exchange there. • Thus, we have defined a European data standard consisting of ELM version 3, which is largely compatible with both ELMO and SDG (regarding SDG under the restriction that SDG will use ELM).

During this meeting, a mapping table was produced: its clean and finalised version will be circulated in the course of August. As this is a significant achievement, DG EMPL calls for a meeting with EMREX and ELMO key stakeholders as well as relevant Commission colleagues to discuss the following:

• Any pending questions regarding the technical work for the alignment of the two data models (the mapping table will be circulated in advance). • Communication actions regarding this milestone. • Agreement to start a policy discussion on the two data models.

Regarding dates, DG EMPL suggests such an online meeting on 5 September 2022, 16.30-17.30 (Brussels time).

Visit us at the EAEI Poster presentation

On Wednesday 14 September 2022 from 14:30-16:00 EMREX will be present at the EAIE conference in Barcelona. We will give a poster presentation about the achievements of EMREX in the last five years. The use of EMREX has grown over the last years and also its potential. It has proven to be very useful in several uses cases, such as admissions, recruitment and data exchange between universities. Next to that we will also give an outline of the future plans. Don’t miss it!

EMREX at EAEI conference in Barcelona

The Groningen Declaration Network Annual Meeting

EMREX is represented at the 11th Annual Meeting that will take place on 12-14 October 2022 in the birthplace of the GDN, the beautiful city of Groningen, The Netherlands (and also online). The themes of the 2022 meeting are Learner Centricity – Interoperability – Lifelong Learning which highlights the interdependence of three key issues that have to be met to make digital learner data portability a global reality. That is, a focus on the pivotal role of learner centricity as starting point, requiring interoperability so as to ensure seamless learners’ access to their data. This is almost exactly the same focus as the EMREX network and we are therefore very glad to be present. Our presentation will focus specifically on the different standards for educational data and a suggested way forward. The Groningen Declaration Network is an international, non-profit and voluntary network that supports academic and professional digital credential mobility so that citizens worldwide are able to consult and share their authentic educational data autonomously, with the expectation of fair recognition. Link to the conference site: https://www.groningendeclaration.org/2022-am-groningen/

EMREX Data Access Points in the EWP Network and Discovery 6.0.0

EMREX Data Access Points are already present in the EWP Registries, both in DEV and PROD Networks. To check if your manifest file is properly handled by the Registry, please visit:

• https://dev-registry.erasmuswithoutpaper.eu/status  • https://registry.erasmuswithoutpaper.eu/status.

Bare in mind that we still use the new EMREG, which reads the XML catalogue file from the EWP registry and translates it to the JSON format expected by the EMREX clients. The EMREX clients switched from the old EMREG and now send requests straight to the new EMREX. The old EMREG has been removed. That means that EMPs are now registered only in the EWP registry but the EMREX clients can still get responses in the old JSON format.

EMREX clients send requests directly to the new EMREG which translates EWP catalogue file from XML to JSON format

Eventually we will delete the new EMREG. The EMREX clients will send requests directly to the EWP registry and will accept the catalogue file in the XML format. Inform your client about this requirement!

EMREX clients send requests directly to the EWP Registry and read catalogue file in XML format

The other important news is that the EWP Network switches to the Discovery 6.0.0. Soon earlier versions will become obsolete. All EMREX Data Access Points should change the manifest files accordingly.

You can find the example here: https://usosweb.demo.usos.edu.pl/api/manifest.php.

There is a new mandatory element: <ewp:admin-provider>MUCI (USOS)</ewp:admin-provider>. There is a new namespace:

xmlns="https://github.com/erasmus-without-paper/ewp-specs-api-discovery/tree/stable-v6" <discovery version="6.0.0"> <url>https://usosweb.demo.usos.edu.pl/api/manifest.php</url> </discovery> 

Get in touch

To contact us write to info@emrex.eu. To get support write to support@emrex.eu.

EMREX 1st place winner for Network Technology at PESC

At the PESC 22nd annual best practices competition EMREX has been awarded with the 1st place for Network Technology. “The level of commitment and attention to detail, undertaken by the EMREX Executive Committee to build a multi-national, interoperable, digital network, is unparalleled,” states Michael D. Sessa, PESC President & CEO. “The EMREX Executive Committee is a best practice itself in open, transparent software development and deployment. In being such a major achievement, EMREX serves as a best practice model in network technology for other countries, other networks and other communities.“ The EMREX Executive Committee presented the EMREX solution at PESC’s Data Summit on the 21st of October 2021. The committee is thrilled to have won this price and as said many times before, the solution is not bound to the European borders and we are always looking to expand our network. It can be used before, during and after studies, from educational to employment purposes. It would be very interesting to explore the North American continent for new collaborations. The full text of the message can be found on the PESC website.

EMREX Workshop 23-24 November 2021

The EMREX User Group held a two-day workshop in November 2021. It was held as a hybrid meeting with participation onsite at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany and online.

Onsite participants of the EMREX workshop at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen

The topics ranged from discussions about strategies for the future to hands-on technical details. There were presentations about for instance security, blockchains, student Ids and use cases about EMREX and ELMO. One presentation was about readiness of HISinOne for EMREX. HIS is a supplier of Student Information System with a large customer base in Germany so this is good news for the community. Changes in the ELMO-format were discussed which lead to inviting to another workshop for all stakeholders (see separate article). More information including all presentations can be found at the EMREX portal.

News about the ELMO-format

ELMO is public domain (available in Github) and all stakeholders are free to suggest changes. At the meeting in November 2021 the EMREX network opened up a process for making extensions and alterations to the ELMO-schema. A first workshop was held in December 2021 with the goal to continue with more workshops during the spring and have a final workshop in summer. The workshops will discuss changes in detail and make decisions of incorporation into the standard. The EMREX community plans a final workshop as a pre-conference item at EUNIS 2022, at June 1-3 in Göttingen, Germany. It is still possible to give suggestions to changes to ELMO! It is done online in Github as issues in ELMO repository.

ELMO/EMREX goes SSI via IDunion (contribution by Patrick Herbke, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)

As part of the German IDunion project, research assistants and students work in multiple working packages in the context of Self Sovereign Identity (SSI) solutions. In the education working package it is planned to make existing ELMO documents usable in SSI infrastructures as it provides functionality that the current ELMO structure does not intend to cover. In the SSI context, all documents are stored by the students themselves in full sovereignty and can be verified and combined with proper authentication. Currently, SSI networks use JSON(-LD) data exchange formats exclusively to exchange verifiable credentials, attestations, and presentations. The need for educational credentials leads to the development of an ELMO to JSON(-LD) converter to lower the barrier of importing existing and newly issued diplomas and certificates into the SSI ecosystem. The Dutch project ovrhd created an ELMO-converter that can be accessed via API, e.g.

curl -d "@example_elmo_certificate.xml” -H “Content-Type:text/plain;charset=utf-8” -X POST https://duo.ovrhd.nl/api/elmo/sovrhd | jq

In contrast to this project, the IDunion converter is focused on the conversion from ELMO to JSON-LD format for use as a verifiable credential later on. Furthermore, the IDunion converter considers different ELMO schemas for educational certificates. Schemas describe the profile, including data structures and semantic definitions, of the data used in EMREX. The IDunion ELMO converter contains a schema mapping from an existing ELMO schema to a recently published education schema by the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). The converter automatically adapts the EBSI schema based on a given ELMO certificate (transcript of records, bachelor/master certificate or upper secondary school certificate) and returns JSON-LD formatted content. Currently the IDunion converter offers the following functionality:

•  Conversion of ELMO certificates into JSON(-LD) file format based on the published EBSI schema.
• Publicly available API for testing purposes.

A current version of the IDunion converter runs as a web service hosted at TU Berlin. It can be reached at 130.149.223.146:8081 and the API is documented on GitHub. An example call via terminal, to receive a verifiable credential, could be:

curl -d @demo.xml -H "Content-Type: application/xml"

http://130.149.223.146:8081/api/xml/convert/verifiableCredential

or without formatting:

curl -d @demo.xml -H "Content-Type: application/xml" http://130.149.223.146:8081/api/xml/convert/

The IDunion ELMO converter takes part in many contexts, for instance, efforts in the EBSI early adopters’ wave 2 projects.

EMREX Data Access Points in the EWP Network

EMREG is a centralized service in the EMREX Network that has to be available to all clients (EMREX clients, EMC in short). It gives a list of all available servers (EMREX Data Access Points, EMP in short), as well as other information necessary to establish communication with each of them. On January 29, 2021, during the technical workshop of the EMREX User Group, it has been decided to move content of EMREG to the EWP Registry. Two first steps of this plan have already been made in the development and production settings. First, all EMPs posted the manifest files in the format specified for the EWP Network, with the dedicated emrex-data-access-point API. The Schema for the manifest file for the EMP is available at: https://github.com/erasmus-without-paper/ewp-specs-api-emrex-data-access-point/blob/stable-v1/manifest-entry.xsd These manifest files have been registered in the EWP Registry (DEV and PROD). The new EMREG has been designed and implemented, which reads the XML catalogue file from the EWP registry and translates it to the JSON format expected by the EMREX clients. The EMREX clients switched from the old EMREG and now send requests straight to the new EMREG. The old EMREG has been removed. That means that EMPs are now registered only in the EWP registry but the EMREX clients can still get responses in the old JSON format. The proper requests to get the list are the following:

• https://emreg.test.usos.edu.pl/emp-list.json (DEV network)
• https://emreg.usos.edu.pl/emp-list.json (PROD network)

The response has the format: {“emps”: …}. Temporarily client can also use links with the old terminology:

• https://emreg.test.usos.edu.pl/ncp-list.json (DEV network)
• https://emreg.usos.edu.pl/ncp-list.json (PROD network)

The return format is: {“ncps”: …}.

EMREX clients send requests directly to the new EMREG which translates EWP catalogue file from XML to JSON format

There is still a step ahead. Eventually we will delete the new EMREG. The EMREX clients will send requests directly to the EWP registry and will accept the catalogue file in the XML format.

EMREX clients send requests directly to the EWP Registry and read catalogue file in XML format

EMREX/ELMO documentation

Due to the latest changes in the architecture of the EMREX Network and the terminology (see section on EMREX Data Access Points in the EWP Network) changes in the EMREX technical documentation are needed. EMREX Executive Committee decided that the best option would be to upgrade documentation but at the same time gather all its parts in one place. This means that technical documentation which is now posted in the emrex.eu website should be moved to GitHub to the EMREX repository. This work will be generously sponsored by the LADOK consortium. We hope that the first results will be available to the community in the coming months.

Vietsch project

EMREX User Group was granted a funding by the Vietsch Foundation in the year 2020. After successful completion of the first part of the project Industrializing the EMREX Registry and reviewing the ELMO standard the main focus was to concentrate on dissemination work and maximizing the value and benefits of EMREX. It soon became clear that due to COVID-19 situation these efforts could not be fulfilled as planned. The Vietsch Foundation agreed to the EMREX Executive Committee’s proposal to prolong the project from the original deadline of June 2021 to December 2021 and to change the scope of the project. Although the situation seemed better for the Autumn 2021 the pandemic took a turn for the worst thus making it impossible to organize physical meetings and to attend congresses on a larger scale. We were happy to arrange one meeting, however, on the support of the Vietsch funding – the workshop in Göttingen, Germany in November. Even though the project funding couldn’t be utilized to the full extent we were able to reach most of the project goals. The EMREX Executive Committee and the whole EMREX User Group would like to thank the Vietsch Foundation for their support and we are looking forward to future cooperation! The end report will be published on emrex.eu website after it has been finalized and delivered to the Vietsch Foundation.

Get in touch

To contact us write to info@emrex.eu. To get support write to support@emrex.eu.

News from the EMREX Annual Assembly 2021

On June 14, 2021 the EMREX Annual Assembly was held. This year like the previous one it was held online. The yearly report from 2020 was presented and accepted, just as the yearly plan for 2021. Apart from the usual agenda items stated in the statutes there was one Keynote, Digitally authenticated and machine-readable certificates in Germany by Jörg Rückriemen, Bundesdruckerei and also a Case study – Use of ELMO to transport recognitions from PIM to the Campus Management Systems by Bettina Bube, University of Göttingen.

One agenda item was the decision to move the EMREX Registry (EMREG) into the EWP Registry. It was decided to proceed with this and get in touch with EWP/EDSSI to clarify the details. The goal would be to have this completed by the end of the year. See separate chapter in this newsletter.

The Executive Committee’s report was presented with the Yearly report and the plan for 2021. One question was raised about Single Digital Gateway and specifically the second phase and the Once Only Principle – it has wide effects in the EU area. It was decided that a position paper on the matter will be prepared and sent to appropriate parties to share our views from EMREX perspective. See separate chapter in this newsletter.

At the meeting the following new members were welcomed into the EMREX User Group:

• German Academic Exchange Service, Germany,
• RECSIE, Research Consortium for the Sustainable Promotion of International Education, Japan,
• Otentica, the Netherlands,
• Diplomatic Research and Policy Foundation, North Macedonia,
• Sphairas, Germany.

All documents can be found at https://zgfreestyle.hr/emrex/documents/.

EMREX at EUNIS 2021

EMREX was represented at the 2021 EUNIS conference. It was this year also held online but partly on a virtual Greek island with the possibility to interact with both sponsors and other participants.

EMREX was part of the pre-congress workshop on June 1^st.

The workshop was entitled Everywhere and Nowhere: student mobility in the era of micro learning, digital credentials and blockchain and covered a broad range of topics relating to student mobility. An interesting point is that digital transformation (such as micro credentials) are driven now also by the groups interested in teaching and learning. More information can be found here: https://www.eunis.org/eunis2021/sessions/everywhere-and-nowhere/.

EMREX also had a presentation in the slot Interoperability across the EU. Topics and presentations can be found here: https://www.eunis.org/eunis2021/sessions/interoperability-across-the-eu/.

More EMREX at EUNIS 2021 – EUNIS Elite Award

For a long time Germany was seen as a hopeless case concerning EMREX and digitization. Based on support especially from the Netherlands and also from Norway, Germany was able to achieve significant successes in the last two years. Projects such as StudIES+, PIM and the digital certificate prototype of the Bundesdruckerei have already been reported in the EMREX newsletters.

This was the basis on which the German organizations Stiftung für Hochschulzulassung (SfH), Technische Universität München (TUM), Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Hochschule Harz, CyberSec-LSA, Hochschul-Informations-System eG (HIS) and last but not least the Dutch Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO), the mentor of many German digitization initiatives, wrote a joint paper for this year’s EUNIS annual conference entitled Progress on Digitization of Higher Education Processes towards Standards EU & DE. This paper provides a rather comprehensive overview of the current successes as well as problems and future challenges of German digitization in higher education. EMREX is mentioned 14 times in this paper, a sign how important EMREX was, is and will be in the digital transformation of the German education sector as well.

Thus, it is also a merit of EMREX that this paper won the EUNIS Elite Award for excellence in implementing Information Systems for Higher Education.

The winning paper can be found at Progress on Digitization of Higher Education Processes towards Standards EU & DE: Status and future Perspectives.

Authors of the winning paper

Digital Credentials: International Frameworks, Interoperable Standards, and Trust

(contribution by Dr. Matthias Gottlieb, Technical University of Munich, Germany)

On June 16th, 2021, the project Digital Credentials for Higher Education Institutions (in German Digitale Bildungsnachweise für Hochschulen, DiBiHo, https://www.dibiho.de) hosted virtually the 1^st International Stakeholder Dialogue. The event offered for the project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is an excellent opportunity to connect with Higher Education Institution (HEI) professionals working in Administration & IT, International Offices, and in Management & Strategy, with regulators and policy-makers on national and EU level, with developers, operators, and researchers from the Digital Credentials Community around the world.

Dr. Matthias Gottlieb from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) introduced the research project as a joint project (TUM, Hasso-Plattner-Institut (HPI), and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)). Afterward, Kim Hamilton Duffy (Chair of the W3C Credentials Community Group at MIT) and Philipp Schmidt (Director of Digital Learning and Collaboration, MIT Media Lab) advocated in their

presentation a case for standards in achieving interoperability. The keynote highlighted the importance of international collaboration within the Verifiable Credentials ecosystem and established common ground with the DCC’s (https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu/) guiding principles and mission.

One of the major challenges is the interoperability of standards. One workshop gave attention to the most significant challenge: the interoperability of standards.

From a worldwide perspective, there are several initiatives introducing recommendations on how to handle a digital credential. However, W3C with verifiable credentials coins itself as an ‘envelope’ solution. It allows an object, together with the valid recipient (holder) and issuer data, to more accurately wrap a document like a certificate while providing secure and valid transport. The format for the document is not set yet. One of these could be EMREX with ELMO. EMREX was represented in the workshop and contributed expertise on previous proof of concepts. In addition, first proof of concepts explores the feasibility of ELMO.

The subject matter is multi-layered, and each layer is already complex in itself. Therefore, the basis is a precise analysis of the current situation in which the project is currently.

For example, different country requirements in Germany, specifically federal states, already have to be considered a layer at the national level. At the international level, the coordination effort increases accordingly. In addition, different structures such as privacy regulation have to be evolved and are still in place. From a European perspective, the GDPR plays a significant role. One of the views is the US market and its regulations. Still, a gladly forgotten part is the other regions: Asia, more specifically China and India, Africa and America, such as Brazil and Canada. However, the project also deals with these issues. Besides, each of these structures has its frameworks for education. Until today recognition of courses within the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) space remains partly still a challenge. Nevertheless, digitization offers us a unique opportunity to rethink and simplify processes, especially in this critical area of education. DiBiHo contributes significantly to this by taking care of the transfer of valid certificates and even more to exchange these certificates not paper-based but as a digital credential.

EMREX vs EBSI

In 2020, Croatian Ministry for Science and Education initiated the Transparency of Croatian Qualifications for Enhanced Recognition (TRACER) project which aims to create preconditions and legal framework for the diploma registry for Croatia’s accredited HEIs. The project is funded under the EU Erasmus+ program. The project partners are Croatian Ministry of Science and Education as the coordinator and DUO, Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs, the Department of the Dutch Ministry of Science, Culture and Education.

The project will use already existing good practises in the Netherlands in order to enable Croatian higher education institutions staff to enhance their competences and become aware of possibilities and advantages. The technical solution specifies the utilization of the EBSI blockchain for diploma distribution and verification purposes using the Europass EDCI and ELMO data standards.

This however does not fully cover all of the use cases which TRACER needs to cover. One of these use cases is also storing and transferring partial student records before the completion of their studies. This is where we recognized the flexibility of the EMREX solution and the underlying ELMO data format. It is also worth to note and was of importance that the ELMO standard is the basis for EDCI used in EBSI.

Independent of, but in close coordination with, the Croatian project, the German project

Germany/NRW is implementing a similar concept as part of the EBSI Early Adopter Program. There, it is about embedding the concept realized in Germany, which was reported in the EMREX Newsletter of September 2020 (Germany’s digital certificates using EMREX), into the EBSI infrastructure.

Conceptual overview of the new Croatian diploma system

DigiNet project

The project Digital Innovations in Credential Evaluation and the Networks (DigiNet) is now halfway into its project period. EMREX is part of the steering group together with Groningen Declaration Network and International Association of Universities.

The objectives in DigiNet are to develop ready-to-go digitization plans for all involved partners, and to provide a framework for good practices for ENIC-NARICs and other stakeholders.

Furthermore, DigiNet aims to support a European approach to digitization with common strategies for standardisation of e.g. processes and databases. The project builds on the results obtained in the DigiRec project.

The DigiNet project is an Erasmus+ project with partners from European and Canadian ENIC and NARIC centres, lead by Nuffic Netherlands.

An important part of the work is to evaluate the possibilities for digital input to the process in form of credentials, and digitalization of the output statement. A workshop with EMREX and Europass was held earlier this year, and the project is looking into doing a pilot to explore further possibilities.

Report from the DigiRec Project

A mini-seminar will be arranged later in the project to present its findings.

More details on the project can be found on the project web page https://www.nuffic.nl/en/subjects/recognition-projects/diginet-2020-2022.

Position paper

The EMREX Executive Committee wrote, in collaboration with DUO, a position paper to inform stakeholders and the different DG’s about the implementation of the Once Only Principle in the European Single Digital Gateway in relation to Requesting academic recognition of diplomas, certificates or other proof of studies or courses. The EMREX EC believes that the EMREX and SDG-OOP systems could and should co-exist and reinforce each other and therefore would like to explore the route together with the European Commission and possibly other European member countries, mainly because EMREX focuses on similar topics such as employee mobility and lifelong learning. In the position paper the EC focuses on the willingness to cooperate with the EU on the SDG implementing act and on the following ideas on this topic:

1. Re-use of Existing Sectoral Systems: The process of diploma exchange and recognition has been implemented in many EMREX user countries for several years. As such, the EMREX users have a lot of practical knowledge and experience to offer in the matter of a safe diploma exchange. Therefore, EMREX Members share the opinion that the EMREX and SDG- OOP systems could and should co-exist and reinforce each other.
2. Governance and Scope: For the sake of understanding who is responsible for which part of the system, the scope of the SDG regulation and the OOP system should be defined more clearly.
3. Privacy and Security: The current SDG regulation is not sufficient as a valid legal base for the actual data exchange. This is specifically a problem with regards to the preview space which currently seems to be projected within the location of the evidence requester. The control of use on data will be difficult. For the exchange of diplomas and credentials for the benefit of student and employee mobility, this problem can be prevented by using the technical system of EMREX where preview and consent take place at the evidence provider.
4. eIDAS: The SDG OOP is coupled with eIDAS. Currently, educational institutions across Member States in general do not have access to eIDAS. This does have the attention of the EMREX community, but it adds to the workload for the more than 4000 parties involved. Due to the decentralized and yet secure character we think EMREX can smoothen the implementation in the practice.
5. Implementation Deadline: December 2023 is too early to require all Member States to have a digitalised procedure for the exchange of diplomas. EMREX can actively offer help here with our network of people to identify and define the data exchanged and implement the interfaces needed.

The paper was sent to DG EAC, DG CONNECT, DG DIGIT, DG GROW, DG EMPLOY and all national SGD coordinators and was well received.

EMREX Data Access Points in the EWP Registry

EMREG is a centralized service in the EMREX Network that has to be available to all SMPs (clients). It gives a list of all available NCPs (servers), as well as other information necessary to establish communication with each of them. The original architecture of the EMREX Network with EMREG is shown in the diagram.

Original architecture of the EMREX Registry

On January 29, 2021, during the technical workshop of the EMREX User Group, a suggestion was made how to make the EMREX registry more robust and easier to maintain. It has been decided to gradually move content of EMREG to the EWP Registry.

As the old names, SMP and NCP, do not well express the roles played by the nodes in the network, it has been decided to rename them to, respectively, EMREX client (EMC) and EMREX Data Access Point (EMP). These new names are used in the following diagrams.

The first step has already been made. All EMPs posted the manifest files in the format specified for the EWP Network, with the dedicated emrex-ncp API. These manifest files have been registered in the development EWP Registry, available at https://dev-registry.erasmuswithoutpaper.eu/. The new EMREG has been designed and implemented. All the requests coming to the old EMREG are now redirected to the new EMREG which reads the XML catalogue file from the EWP registry and translates it to the JSON format expected by the EMREX clients. That means that EMPs are now registered only in the EWP registry but the EMREX clients can still get responses in the old JSON format.

New EMREG translates EWP catalogue file to JSON format

At the next step the EMREX clients will skip the old EMREG and will send requests straight to the new EMREG. The old EMREG will be removed.

EMREX clients send requests directly to the new EMREG

The final step would be to delete the new EMREG. The EMREX clients will send requests directly to the EWP registry and will accept the catalogue file in the XML format.

EMREX clients send requests directly to the EWP Registry

At the EMREX Annual Assembly which took place in June 2021 it has been decided that the process to move EMREG to the EWP registry in the production settings should take place until the end of 2021.

Vietsch project

The Vietsch foundation granted a funding for the EMREX network in the year 2020 for a project lasting until the end on June 2021. The first part of the project Industrializing the EMREX Registry and reviewing the ELMO standard was finished earlier this year and the project group has reported the activities and results to the Vietsch foundation. The second part which in a large part was supposed to focus on disseminating efforts has been suspended due to COVID-19 situation. Although dissemination work has been done it has only been in online events.

Due to the special circumstances the EMREX Executive Committee approached the Vietsch foundation with a proposal to prolong the project until the end of 2021. In addition, it was proposed that half of the funding could be used to expert work relating to producing communication material and/or development of a data converter. The Vietsch foundation agreed to this proposal and the project will be finished by the end of 2021.

Get in touch

To contact us write to info@emrex.eu. To get support write to support@emrex.eu.