Form of words:
New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education has come up with a solution called Academic Documents using blockchain technology to record their result certificates in a linked chain structure and provide transparent, tamper proof and paperless access to these certificates.
According to officials, the result certificates are kept at various places in a distributed manner, involving multiple stakeholders, to protect them from any tampering attempts under this technology.
Blockchain technology ensures that academic documents are recorded in a secure and tamper-proof manner. These documents can be accessed online in a reliable and verifiable manner.
The ‘Academic Blockchain Document’ can be used by various educational institutions for verification at the time of admission for higher studies as well as for job offers by companies.
“The Academic (Blockchain) Document or ABCD of CBSE has been set up using blockchain technology to record certificates in a linked chain structure. For starters, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has made available the digitally signed certificates of class 10 and 12 for the year 2019-2021 and will gradually carry forward the previous years’ certificates in the coming months.
“On issuance of fresh certificates by CBSE, the digitally signed certificates will be sent to the blockchain-based system to create an additional secure link,” a senior CBSE official said.
The network is established with nodes in Bengaluru, Pune and Jaipur. Presently, the certificate chain is managed by NIC at its data centers.
“One of the challenges generally faced is the verification of the authenticity of the certificates produced by the candidates for admission, job, loan, etc. Verification of the correctness and genuineness of the certificates with the respective universities or boards requires considerable effort and processing time.
“Hence most of the time, institutes and organizations insist on the production of original certificates by the candidates. Academic (blockchain) documents address these challenges with respect to verification of documents submitted by the candidates,” the official said.
Blockchain technology records data in a distributed ledger with ownership of all participating stakeholders. The data is recorded on-chain based on consensus among stakeholders as well as replicated across all locations in the distributed network of blockchain nodes.
“It eliminates the dependency on any third party for verification. Data is linked and stored with cryptographic security so that it is immutable and traceable. The official explained that adding blocks to the blockchain ensures that they cannot be tampered with and that the data is trustworthy as it can be verified among the participating stakeholders.
CBSE had earlier developed its own digital academic repository named Parinaam Manjusha in 2016. This repository has been integrated with the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) Digital Locker Platform.
“Currently, the result data of class 10 and 12 examinees of 18 years – from 2004 to 2021 – is available online for download of digital academic documents by students and verification by employers and higher education institutions.
“Around 12 crore digital real time generated, digitally signed and PKI based QR coded academic documents like mark sheets, migration certificates and pass certificates are available in this repository,” a CBSE official said.
The documents can also be used by institutions for online consultation by integrating their systems with plug-in interfaces. Banks and financial institutions can also use this system to sanction educational loans and merit-based scholarships based on the merit of the applicants.
“One can verify the authenticity of the certificate even after many years of issuance. This will provide a trace of all the insertions or changes made on a particular certificate,” the official said.
Read also: CBSE says schools will have to submit marks for class 12 board evaluation in a week or face action
subscribe our channel youtube And Wire
Why is the news media in crisis and how can you fix it?
India needs independent, unbiased, non-hyphenated and questionable journalism even more as it is facing many crises.
But the news media itself is in trouble. There have been brutal layoffs and pay-cuts. The best of journalism are shrinking, yielding to raw prime-time spectacle.
ThePrint has the best young journalists, columnists and editors to work for it. Smart and thinking people like you will have to pay a price to maintain this quality of journalism. Whether you live in India or abroad, you can Here.