The CAD solution wins the “Decentralized Digital Identity” award at the Alastria Blockchain Awards.

The CAD solution, being deployed by eleven Spanish universities, wins the “Decentralized Digital Identity” award at the Alastria Blockchain Awards.

The CAD Digital Academic Credentials project, based on blockchain and involving eleven Spanish universities, enables the digitization of all types of credentials. This solution is especially important in university credentials, by avoiding potential fraud in academic degrees.

The CAD solution develops a sovereign and verifiable digital identity for academia, allowing students to manage their academic credentials in a secure and verifiable way through blockchain. The solution, promoted by eleven Spanish universities, protects the privacy and integrity of academic data, reducing fraud and optimizing administration. Now it also has the endorsement of the Alastria Blockchain Awards, winning in the Decentralized Digital Identity category, for - in the words of the jury - “its contribution to the adoption of decentralized digital identity, supported by the European Commission through the promotion of the European Identity Wallet, and which promotes the recovery of user control of something as important as identity in the digital environment”.

The CAD project addresses identity theft and data protection in the academic environment by providing verifiable credentials for degrees and student IDs, with a solution that complies with RGPD and eIDAS 2 regulations. It will allow students and alumni of the universities that have joined the project to receive digital certifications of their own official degrees and certifications of any activity performed, as in the case of volunteering. Thus, universities and companies can issue and receive credentials, for example, to apply for a job in a company or enroll in a course with prerequisites such as English level or a degree for a master's degree.

These certifications, along with the student ID card, can be shared completely digitally from a mobile application, which keeps track of all credentials issued by the universities and those shared by the student. For universities, the issuing and validation processes are automatic, thus avoiding costly and insecure manual validation processes.

“CAD guarantees security in the issuance of this type of digital certifications, which, until now, were performed manually and in the same way as decades ago. It is a step forward in the digitization of the university environment. CAD works as an accelerator for the implementation of digital credentials based on EBSI in the main universities of the country”, explains Fernando Pescador, assistant to the vice-rector for Digital Transformation of the UPM rectorate, who leads the CAD project.

Eleven Spanish universities are already participating in this project, led by the UPM: the public universities UAM, Complutense, UNED, Universidad de Extremadura, Universidad de Málaga, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and Universidad de Vigo; and the private university UNIR. It is a milestone in the issuance of digital credentials through blockchain using both the Spanish network Alastria and the European network EBSI that will allow interaction between all European universities. In total, it is estimated that more than one million people, including students and alumni, will be able to benefit from the results of the project.

Moreover, as confirmed by Epifanio Delgado, Director of Government and Public Services at Inetum, “access to the licenses of this project is free for Spanish public universities thanks to the European funding it has received through the Unidigital Plan, launched by the Ministry of Universities and which seeks precisely the digitization of the university system. Private universities can also join the CAD project if they wish to do so”.

The CAD solution is based on the Dalion project, a collaborative project coordinated by Inetum together with 10 other large companies from different sectors (Banca March, Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Generali, Línea Directa Aseguradora, MAPFRE, Repsol, Unicaja Banco and the Polytechnic University of Madrid), which promotes the use of self-managed identity through blockchain. The self-managed identity promotes the digitization process of all types of credentials and is especially important in university credentials, allowing the procedures to be carried out in a few minutes, completely digitally and avoiding possible fraud in these degrees.