Groningen Declaration: The Future of Digital Student Data Portability

This spring I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Málaga, Spain to represent Parchment and become a signatory of the Groningen Declaration. This international document seeks common ground to best serve both the academic and professional mobility needs of learners around the world by bringing together key stakeholders in the Digital Student Data Ecosystem.

Introduced in 2012 with meetings annually, the Groningen Network is a process. The intent of this process is a more integrated global system for the secure exchange of electronic student records. The process, of which the declaration is a part, includes demonstration projects and annual meetings designed to connect key governments, service providers and educational institutions. Each annual meeting includes a new class of invited signatories. An initial signatory, the U.S. based National Student Clearinghouse has played an important role in leading this international movement.

The declaration itself is a set of principles focused on allowing learners around the world to be able to consult and share their authentic educational data with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want. The full text of the Groningen Declaration can be found here.

By signing this declaration, we have signaled our engagement with universities, companies and governments worldwide to facilitate the transfer of electronic academic credentials. It is an exciting time to participate in the early formation of a global ecosystem of governments, educational institutions and service providers committed to enabling the secure exchange of electronic student records.

Other global signatories from 2015 include:

• Universities of Australia
• ARUCC (Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada)
• CDSL (Central Depository Services Limited) and C-NAD )National Academic Depository)
• Academic Information Centre
• EP-Nuffic
• Groningen University
• Glavexpertcentr –National Information Center
• Universidad de Málaga
• CollegeNET
• IMS Global
• IERF (International Education Research Foundation)
• PESC
• Stanford University
• TAICEP (The Association for Credential Evaluation Professionals)
• University of Texas at Austin

There’s always more to learn.