Last week the director of the Federal State Institution “Glavexpertcentre” Vera Skorobogatova has participated in the 5th Annual Groningen Declaration Network Meeting held in Cape Town, South Africa. 

Groningen Declaration on Digital Student Data Depositories Worldwide was organized at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in 2012. The signatories of this Groningen Declaration on Digital Student Data Depositories Worldwide, are witnessing a growing awareness in large parts of the worlds of politics and academics, as well as in public opinion, of the need to establish a more complete and far-reaching delivery of digital student data. The National Information Center on foreign recognition in the Russian Federation has signed the following Declaration in 2015 and aims at expanding the existing federal information systems of the Federal Service in Supervision in the sphere of Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor).

In order to make this free movement of students and skilled workers a reality, and in order to unleash the full potential of digital student data depositories, the signatories want to look into privacy rights, ownership of data, identification, access, and forwarding/sharing of data, next to compatibility of systems and comparability of data.

“A Digital World for All: Making Skills Mobile” is the motto for this year’s meeting, which accurately reflects the ambitions and potential of the Groningen Declaration Network. Qualification skills, learning outcomes, being a person’s attainments in terms of academic training, professional experience, or otherwise, should be digitally articulated, exchanged and accepted.

At the conference the participants discussed topics concerning the authenticity of the awarded qualifications and the creation of reliable databases of students and awarded academic degrees – diplomas. The director of “Glavexpertcentre” Vera Skorobogatova has presented the federal information systems of apostilles and the register of documents on education. 

The main topics of the conference covered 3 broad categories: political issues; administrative issues such as e-Enrollment; and hard core IT issues. Practically all participating countries shared their experience in electronization of document flow in education and demonstrated their projects. For example, the representatives of India have told about the work of the National Academic Depository that has been conceptualized to hold all types of Academic awards offered by Academic Institutions in digital form. The Depository has overcome a few challenges, with respect to Academic diversity in terms of types of awards and the audience which ranged from high school-goers to those who are employed/employable, hardware, software, logistics and acceptance of C-NAD. It needs collaborative efforts of IT, education, planning, legal and media professionals.

The China Higher Education Student Information and Career Center (CHESICC) has been able to steadily build up its network of partners in the digital student data ecosystem, to promote global student record mobility in partnership with evaluation agencies, data exchange companies and educational institutions. This presentation introduces CHESICC's pilot programs with its partners in the USA and in Europe. While focusing on technical development and customer service, presenters will also pay attention to student privacy and application procedure. The National Student Clearinghouse’s (NSC) pilots continue to move toward a fully integrated model of electronic educational document transference within the G.R.E.E.N. principles - a framework for international data exchange, which has been incorporated into the GDN core principles. During the session the participants also demonstrated other pilot projects from agencies and universities of Europe, USA, Australia and South Africa.

The Officials of UNESCO Lene Oftedal and Borhene Chakroun have introduced to the participants the development strategy of the Global Convention on recognition and the ideas concerning the Groningen Declaration.

In total representatives of 28 countries have participated in the conference.

The conference host this year was the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), which celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Certainly, the goal of the Groningen Declaration very precisely meets the spirit of time mobility, when it is possible within 5 minutes to obtain reliable information about learning outcomes of any student without paperwork and long-term inquiries. The following conference of the Groningen Declaration has presented progressive models and facilitated and built the new architecture of the international educational field in the information society.

Vera Skorobogatova has invited the participants to continue the discussion at the annual international conference organized by the National Information Center on October 15-16, 2016 in Moscow.