Blockchain, OpenCerts and Partnership
Reflect on the past
It all started in Nov 2017 when Patrice from Ngee Ann Poly approached us with this use case. Our team accepted the challenge and developed a prototype using blockchain within four months. Patrice then used the prototype 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.
By Apr 2019, OpenCerts has grown from a blockchain PoC with Ngee Ann Polytechnic, to a national deployment in Singapore’s 🇸🇬 education sector.
All credit for our success goes to the amazing people mentioned in the Credit Rolls 👇
Look to the future
…, the Government cannot make this happen alone, cannot make this happen through force of will, by wishing it, by making speeches. We need the ideas and the capabilities of our people and businesses. As a nation, everyone needs to be part of our Smart Nation journey.
We do not have a monopoly on the best ideas and talent, and we need to create opportunities for citizens, community partners and businesses to contribute meaningfully to Smart Nation — Dr Janil Puthucheary
We have received requests from both local and overseas institutions to onboard OpenCerts and would like to partner our communities and businesses to meet these demands.
To encourage partnership and drive adoption, our engineering principle on using open-standards, open source and public permissionless blockchain for OpenCerts shall remain unchanged. OpenCerts will continue to be free for all students and employers to verify educational credentials.
We are looking for partners who are interested in one or more of these areas:
- Help us support more educational institutions such as private training providers onboard OpenCerts. E.g. Partners such as systems integrator, ISVs, consultancy and product companies in educational sector, especially those with overseas experience are welcome!
- Tech startups who are keen to build products to manage OpenCerts beyond education sector, such as driving license, business license, marriage certificate, birth certificate, death certificate, etc…
- Job portals, HRMS and employment companies who are interested to automate their credential verification process via API.
- Support overseas education institutions and foreign government agencies who expressed interest to onboard OpenCerts.
For more info, check out our doc and send us a pull request! ✋
What else
Compared to other non-blockchain based solutions, I believe a blockchain based solution, such as OpenCerts works best for this use case. But don’t take my word for it, here’s the comparison with other solutions. 😊
Other from OpenCerts, our team is also exploring the use of blockchain for other domains such as the bill-of-lading, virtual currency and cross-border identity.
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten — Bill Gates
We live in interesting times where technology has such a deep and profound impact in our economy, society and how we live our daily lives. There’s no better time in history to be an engineer.
Our team is looking for software engineers, quality engineers and devops engineers who like what we do and how we operate. If you are interested to join us and make our world a better place, I look forward to hear from you — steven_koh@tech.gov.sg.
For more updates, follow us and our blockchain meetup !
Cheers! 😊
Credit Rolls
All credit for our success goes to our
- Amazing people in GDS — Raymond Yeh, RJ Chow, Joel Tai, Angel Wong
- Bee Teck and his IT team in MOE — Chen Chen, Carol and Charis
- SSG’s team — Richard, Kian Wee and Wenshan
- Most importantly, Clarence, Patrice and his team from Ngee Ann Poly who started this amazing adventure because …
Failed IT projects are often technology-driven. Successful ones are business-led.
Thank you for believing in us while others kept asked, “Has it been done before?” That’s what differentiates visionaries from the average. 😊
