Advancing credential interoperability across Europe 

Enabling lifelong learning and cross-border student mobility requires digital credentials that are widely recognised and easily exchanged across systems. Within the DC4EU project, SURF collaborates with partners such as GÉANT, Govpart, Sikt en Ladok to develop practical solutions that support that. Among these is the Credential Converter: a tool that enables the translation of digital credentials across different standards. A significant step forward in a long-term endeavour to provide optimal cross-border student mobility.  

Digital credentials, such as microcredentials, certificates and digital diplomas, offer a transparent and verifiable way to document knowledge and skills. In the Netherlands, this need for trusted, verifiable credentials has led to the development of edubadges.    

However, credentialing across Europe still suffers from fragmentation. The lack of shared standards and infrastructure hinders mobility and data portability. To address this issue, SURF and Impierce Technologies developed the Credential Converter. This open-source tool performs technical and semantic translation of credentials between different formats, without loss of meaning.  

What does the Credential Converter do?

It supports conversion between widely adopted formats such as ELM, ELMO, and Open Badges, enabling data exchange between systems that use different standards. The Credential Converter operates on JSON files, a format well-suited for structuring and exchanging information like learning outcomes.  

To convert data from one format to another, the tool uses ‘mappings’. These mappings define how fields in the source format correspond to fields in the target format. The conversion tool converts and reformats the source data to the expected target format and positioning. For instance, it maps how a name or date is represented in one system and how it is expected in another. These mappings function as a dictionary for the conversion process. They can be partially generated automatically and manually adjusted where needed. As the Credential Converter is open source, developers can develop it further or integrate it within existing systems.  

Building on existing knowledge: the role of DESM

An important enabler of this capability is the integration with DESM (Data Ecosystem Schema Mapper), a US-based initiative that provides a common language between different credential data models. While DESM ensures semantic consistency, the Credential Converter delivers the technical execution. As a result, machine-readable credentials become meaningful across institutional and national boundaries.  

Interested in learning more or contributing?  Visit the Credential Converter GitHub repository or reach out to paul.denhertog@surf.nl

This article is featured on CONNECT49, the latest issue of the GÉANT CONNECT Magazine!

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