Questions/Answers
Question 1
Please briefly describe the initiative, what issue or challenge it aims to address and specify its objectives. (300 words maximum)
OpenCerts was conceptualised to address three key objectives:
1. To combat education fraud
OpenCerts provided the means to verify if a document had been subjected to tampering, and can be easily verified by the receiving party of such a document. Additionally, verifiers of an OpenCerts certificate will be informed if a certificate had been revoked, without having to check back with the issuing organisation. Unlike PDFs which have been signed digitally, OpenCerts certificates can be revoked post-issuance for example, if a student was found to have cheated. Previously, the holder of a certificate may still be in possession of his/her certificate, even though it had been revoked, and could still share with unsuspecting recipients.
2. Increase speed of verification
In comparison to traditional request of contacting a educational institute to verify the authenticity of a given certificate, which could take days, if not weeks to be completed. OpenCerts platform provides an alternative to verifies the provenance of the education certificates data in matter of seconds.
3. Costs savings and possibility to redeploy an Institute of Higher Learning's (IHL) resources, which had been previously tasked with verification of certificates
Question 2
Please explain how the initiative is linked to the selected category. (100 words maximum)
OpenCerts, a digital certificate, allow for verification across borders, increasing the opportunities for persons looking for jobs, or seeking a higher education.
OpenCerts is open-sourced, and available for any interested organisations to adopt and implement. Using Github as a platform, collaboration with interested organisations(both public and private) to jointly develop OpenCerts, both local and abroad was very easy. Multiple organisations have commercialised OpenCerts, further attesting its effectiveness.
Question 3
a. Please specify which SDGs and target(s) the initiative supports and describe concretely how the initiative has contributed to their implementation. (200 words maximum)
SDG 4.7
OpenCerts has an obfuscation feature which allows for the owner of a certificate to redact selected fields eg. Gender, to allow for fair and equal consideration when a certificate is shared with for example, a prospective employer.
SDG 8.2
Verification of OpenCerts certificates can now be done via self-service and existing resources who have been performing manual verification can be redeployed to other tasks.
SDG 8.6
The use of verifiable documents would facilitate the employment process, providing a means to validate a candidate’s educational credentials, skills and training that he/she may have received.
SDG 17.12
The technology has extended to TradeTrust, for Maritime Trade, in the issuance of Certificate of Origin documents.
SDG 17.16, 17.17
OpenCerts is open-sourced, and available for any interested organisations to adopt and implement. Using Github as a platform, collaboration with interested organisations to jointly develop OpenCerts, both local and abroad was very easy. Multiple organisations have commercialised OpenCerts, further attesting its effectiveness.
OpenCerts is currently implemented in the Education, Maritime and Retail sectors.
Globally, implementations now exist in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and USA.
Upcoming developments include the deployment of this technology in HealthCerts, which travellers can use to attest their health status to the required authorities.
b. Please describe what makes the initiative sustainable in social, economic and environmental terms. (100 words maximum)
Economic sustainability:
A study by one of the IHLs discovered that they had spent seven man-month efforts annually, on the verification and replacement of lost/damaged certificates. Verification of certificates can now be done via self-service, and existing resources can be redeployed to other tasks.
There is no longer a need to create systems that allow for querying of certificate information. All required information is embedded within the OpenCerts document, which is verifiable standalone.
Question 4
a. Please explain how the initiative has addressed a significant shortfall in governance, public administration or public service within the context of a given country or region. (200 words maximum)
OpenCerts was designed, and implemented as a resource for public good.
The solution was open-sourced to promote adoption, facilitate the decentralised issuance of certificates, which are independently verifiable. These verifiable documents allow for decentralised verification, without having the need for addition of IT systems update for point-to-point integrations. Verification can be performed as long as the verifier has internet connectivity.
b. Please describe how your initiative addresses gender inequality in the country context. (100 words maximum)
OpenCerts has an obfuscation feature which allows for the owner of a certificate to redact selected fields eg. Gender, to allow for fair and equal consideration when a certificate is shared with for example, a prospective employer.
c. Please describe who the target group(s) were, and explain how the initiative improved outcomes for these target groups. (200 words maximum)
Graduates:
Recent graduates no longer need to spend time and money to get certified true copies of their certificates for submission to prospective employers or to their next institution of higher learning.
Employers:
Employers are able to verify a certificate within seconds, as compared, to days if not weeks to get the results of a certificate verification.
Educational Institutes:
Educational institutes will have the reduced administrative burden of verifying and replacing lost certificates. Verification can be self-served, and replacements are easily sent over email.
Question 5
a. Please describe how the initiative was implemented including key developments and steps, monitoring and evaluation activities, and the chronology. (300 words)
The initiative started in 2017 when Ngee Ann Polytechnic approached GovTech with their use case of optimising the current process of certificate issuance, re-issuance, and verification.
The GovTech team developed a prototype using blockchain within four months. The prototype was then used to rally other institutions to onboard OpenCerts. It then took six months to rally all Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to onboard, followed by another six months for their students to graduate before the institutions anchored the graduating certificates onto the blockchain.
b. Please clearly explain the obstacles encountered and how they were overcome. (100 words)
Ethereum has a maximum transaction rate of 15 transactions per second. To reduce the time required for transacting on the blockchain, the application of merkle tree proofs to the issuance process, provided the ability to combine multiple issuances into one transaction, thus bypassing the issue of transaction rate throttling.
Question 6
a. Please explain in what ways the initiative is innovative in the context of your country or region. (100 words maximum)
OpenCerts is the first-of-its-kind, national-level implementation of blockchain based certificates. It started as a pilot for the use of blockchain for digital certificates under Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s smart campus initiative. At that point, this technology in the education space was still relatively new and unexplored. Upon confirmation on the efficacy of the solution, the team rallied all IHLs to onboard this solution. To-date, we have 18 IHLs onboard the OpenCerts consortium. These IHLs started with issuance of OpenCerts to their most recent batch of graduates. Organisations such as Singapore Examination and Assessment Board and Singapore University of Social Sciences, have gone one step further, by retrospectively issuing OpenCert equivalent certifications to graduates from previous batches.
b. Please describe, if relevant, how the initiative drew inspiration from successful initiatives in other regions, countries and localities. (100 words maximum)
Built on an open-source platform, the OpenCerts framework is made available for interested industry participants to apply and commercialise, leading the way forward for the adoption of this cutting edge technology.
c. If emerging and frontier technologies were used, please state how these were integrated into the initiative and/or how the initiative embraced digital government. (100 words maximum)
Blockchain was selected as the solution for certificate issuance. The decentralised property of blockchain was matching the requirements of numerous organisations issuing certificates independently. These issuances, published on a public ledger, allowed for all interested parties to verify issued certificates. The immutability of blockchain provided the assurance that issued certificates cannot be tampered with.
Question 7
a. Has the initiative been transferred and/or adapted to other contexts (e.g. other cities, countries or regions) to your organization’s knowledge? If yes, please explain where and how. (200 words maximum)
OpenCerts has been implemented in the Education, Maritime and Retail sectors.
Globally, implementations now exist in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and USA.
Education sector:
Tens of thousands of OpenCerts have been issued to graduates from High School, Polytechnics and Universities, both local and abroad.
Maritime:
OpenCerts was used to ensure that seafaring logs and vocational training hours, were logged, tamperproof, and easily verifiable in the different ports of call. Technology has been extended to TradeTrust for the issuance of Certificate of Origin documents
Retail:
MightJaxx, a Singaporean company, had used OpenCerts to provide a certificate of authenticity to their collectible toy products.
Healthcare:
Issuance of HealthCerts to attest a traveller’s health status, specifically COVID-positive/negative status, to airlines and immigration authorities. The travellers may also verify for themselves, to ensure that they had not been duped by the certificate providers. The use of a verifiable credential seeks to combat document fraud, whereby a person procures a fraudulent medical certificate, either knowingly or unknowingly, for the intent of travel, putting fellow travellers at risk.
b. If not yet transferred/adapted to other contexts, please describe the potential for transferability. (200 words maximum)
NA
Question 8
a. What specific resources (i.e. financial, human or others) were used to implement the initiative? (100 words maximum)
The software development of OpenCerts took a two-man team three months to complete. The source code is stored on GItHub and deployments are on Netlify.
b. Please explain what makes the initiative sustainable over time, in financial and institutional terms. (100 words maximum)
Implementation of the OpenCerts solution is a one-time cost, for IT system integration. This cost is easily offset via the manpower cost savings of manually verifying certificates. The cost of issuing OpenCerts is relatively cheaper than issuance of paper certificates, which typically have unique physical properties that come at high costs.
Question 9
a. Was the initiative formally evaluated either internally or externally?
Yes
b. Please describe how it was evaluated and by whom? (100 words maximum)
An internal evaluation was performed by the Delivery Manager of the OpenCerts Product team.
c. Please describe the indicators and tools used. (100 words maximum)
A three-pronged approach was taken to collect the data defined in the Evaluation Objectives.
1. Use of Google Analytics data
The OpenCerts verification website collects information on the number of OpenCerts which had been submitted for verification, and also the source countries from which the requests came from.
2. Collate information from OpenCerts collaborators
All OpenCerts implementations, from within and outside of Singapore, were collated to provide an overview of:
I. Countries in which OpenCerts were issued.
II. Industry for which OpenCerts was applied to.
3. Searching the Internet for OpenCerts implementations
d. What were the main findings of the evaluation (e.g. adequacy of resources mobilized for the initiative, quality of implementation and challenges faced, main outcomes, sustainability of the initiative, impacts) and how is this information being used to inform the initiative’s implementation? (200 words maximum)
The evaluation recorded three key findings:
1. To-date, no surveys or feedback have been collected from users. This evaluation noted that this is a gap to be addressed by the product development team.
2. The propagation of OpenCerts technology and adoption by certificate recipients has been very successful. This was noted based on the significant increase in certification verifications across the years of 2019 and 2020.
3. Diversification of the technology outside of the Education sector, has also demonstrated the applicability of this technology in the space of verifiable documents.
Question 10
Please describe how the initiative is inscribed in the relevant institutional landscape (for example, how is it situated with respect to relevant government agencies, and how have these institutional relationships been operating). (200 words maximum)
The OpenCersts consortium is led by SkillsFuture Singapore. The consortium comprise of key Institutes of Higher Learning and the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board (SEAB).
IHLs include polytechnics and universities. These are autonomous organisations, each with their own curriculum.
SEAB is a government organisation, responsible for conducting national examinations in Singapore for Primary Schools, Secondary Schools and Junior Colleges.
SkillsFuture Singapore is a statutory board, under the purview of Singapore’s Ministry of Education. They are responsible for the issuance of Workforce Skills Qualifications, a national credential system that trains, develops, assesses and certifies skills and competencies for the workforce.
Question 11
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts emphasis on collaboration, engagement, partnerships, and inclusion. Please describe which stakeholders were engaged in designing, implementing and evaluating the initiative and how this engagement took place. (200 words maximum)
OpenCerts started off as a proof of concept, when a local Institute of Higher Learning (IHL) shared their use case with the Government Technology Agency of Singapore.
Key considerations to be addressed were:
1. Certificates should be tamper-proof.
2. Reduce the effort required to verify certificates (as the traditional verifications were taking 7 man-month effort per annum).
3. Ease the certificate replacement process.
The success of the proof of concept led to the formation of a consortium, comprising 18 issuer organisations (representing IHLs, Educational and Training certificate issuing bodies.
Question 12
Please describe the key lessons learned, and how your organization plans to improve the initiative. (200 words maximum)
Over the course of OpenCerts development, numerous changes were made iteratively. One of the major releases from version 1.5 to version 2.0 involved the update of the verification method to reference DNS text records.
This change came amidst a time when IHLs were preparing to issue certificates with OpenCerts version 1.5. The initial announcement had caused some confusion as to whether version 1.5 would still be supported, and if migration to version 2.0 was mandatory.
In retrospect, the communications for major releases could have been better handled.