Ciao, Italia! Gradbase partners with TAG Innovation School in Milan to issue their Digital Transformation Masters on the Blockchain.

We are very proud to announce an exciting new partnership with TAG Innovation School, the educational branch of the Talent Garden group, which is the biggest startup accelerator in Italy and one of the most important in Europe, with 23 sites located in 6 countries and a vast network of 235 startups.

TAG Innovation School runs several masters courses open to incubated startuppers and external applicants alike. One of their newest and most successful courses, “Digital Transformation per il Made In Italy”, will have its certifications issued on the Bitcoin Blockchain and therefore instantly verifiable by employers in Italy and all over the world.

“Made In Italy” is a vastly recognised mark of quality and professionalism. As the country is embracing digital transformation in many sectors of business and public life, it is mandatory for businesses who push forward this important brand to keep up with and implement digital solutions effectively to remain competitive. TAG and Intesa Sanpaolo have created this course to educate the next generation of highly skilled Chief Digital Officers, who will support small and medium enterprises in the country to avoid stagnation and ensure a global presence in today’s digital economy.

This new pilot, the first of its kind in Italy, will help boost the visibility and importance of this course and the employability of its graduates. Thanks to the Gradbase platform, the latest cohort will receive TAG-branded QR codes and thus be able to flaunt their hard-earned diplomas with ease anywhere they wish.

We had the pleasure to answer a short interview, which was published today on TAG Innovation School’s blog. Here it is in full, translated from Italian:

What is the Blockchain, and what are its advantages versus traditional credentialing systems?

One can think of the Blockchain as a digital ledger, which is distributed on thousands of computers all over the world, and keeps track of all transactions of value that have been written to it. Crucially, the transactions do not have to constitute exchanges of merely financial value, but also of eg. information or execution of contracts. And here is where the advantages crucially lie: Blockchain is able to revolutionise notarisation processes, as it allows disintermediation of any trusted third party in the activity of data verification, without compromising the privacy and security of that data and without the need to store it in full in a traditional database.

One may initially conclude that a traditional database allows the above to be implemented, but there are crucial advantages to using a Blockchain for data issuing and verification that make it a lot more suited to the task.

1- The data stored on a Blockchain is immutable: unlike a regular database, no malicious user can ever modify its contents.

2- Its distributed nature guarantees 24/7 availability and robustness in the event of technical failures.

3- Since the data is not stored as-is, but a cryptographic fingerprint is instead, only individuals who know the data that is to be verified have access to that data, and it cannot be downloaded from the Blockchain to the requester. This is a crucial privacy enhancement.

How do the digital certifications issued by Gradbase work?

Put simply, qualifications issued by Gradbase correspond to transactions issued on the Bitcoin Blockchain. The transaction registers that data eternally, and its rightful owner will receive a QR code containing the compressed information of his/her record.

Once scanned with a smartphone, the QR code will recreate the digital fingerprint of the qualification data it contains, and if it matches what originally exists on the Blockchain as was issued by the official public account (“wallet”) of the institution, then the verification succeeds.

With this process, that takes just a few seconds, no human activity is required to verify the data, no manual nor automated intervention on a paper or digital database is made, and no sensitive data is downloaded to the phone without consent.

Which benefits does this technology offer recruiters?

Such a verification procedure introduces many benefits to recruiters. Firstly, the verification is instant and does not depend on a registry or similar office. This allows verifications to occur effortlessly, and most of all globally, removing any knowledge or language barriers. Thus, the verifications can be performed with the same ease beyond Italy and Italian universities and businesses. Removing this dependency, verification can occur at a fraction of the market price.

The combination of these two factors, faster and cheaper, allows recruiters and HR managers to verify all job candidates’ credentials, not just those of candidates who have passed the interview stage, saving lots of potentially wasted interview time.

Finally, immutability grants the recruiter that the data verified has not been tampered with in any way.

What are the long-term plans for this exciting pilot project?

We have identified in Talent Garden and its Innovation School an Italian excellence in home-grown innovation and education of emerging talent, young professionals, startups and companies that all contribute to the growth of our country. Gradbase wishes to continue playing a primary role in this initiative, giving more value to qualifications issued by legitimate and recognised organisations, and at the same time introducing the benefits of Blockchain technology in Italy, starting with the first pilot of this kind.

In the long-term, we aim to extend the pilot to other Innovation School courses, and at the same time collaborate with its corporate partners. Ultimately, Gradbase’s aim is to expand the ecosystem of organisations using our platform, which is already active in the UK and France and of which TAG — with its students and partners — will be very valuable members.