The Republic of Malta
Nation-state gets a real-time look into credentials issued and how they are used.
Upward mobility
Malta was the first nation-state to implement blockchain-based credentials across their spectrum of educational providers to facilitate smooth transitions for students who are joining the workforce. One of the central points of friction has historically been transmitting and verifying official records. So, various types of training programs across Malta — higher education, skills training, government programs — are issuing records of achievement to graduates that can immediately be used for job applications. The Ministry’s federated account gives them an analytical view into the dynamics of their educational economy.
This infrastructure provides Maltese learners and workers a way to securely store all of their records of lifelong learning in one place, prove that they own them and share them with anyone in the world for free. Employers and others can instantly verify that a credential is authentic using independent blockchain verification, saving significant time and money. This allows institutions to prevent fraud and protect their brands while giving learners and workers full control of their official records.
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Maltese businesses will find that hiring workers with the right qualifications has gotten much easier. This is a win-win for Malta, whose skilled workforce is among the primary drivers of its economic success.
— Evarist Bartolo, Minister for Education and Employment, Malta
Governance
Planning a nation-state scale implementation included understanding the Ministry’s need to manage a confederation of education providers who are issuing digital certificates. The Ministry also had to easily see an aggregation of certificates and issue analytics from across the country. A key factor in being able to merge data across a diverse ecosystem is utilizing a standardized equivalency framework for defining different levels of achievement.
The Maltese Credentialing Framework provides these definitions and is built into each school’s issuing platform. Every certificate issued contains detailed metadata that is human and machine readable.
The end result is a governance view that provides a real-time lens into what types of credentials have been issued, as well as how they are being used in the world. This provides a data-rich view of their ecosystem, which can be used to guide decision-making.