- From: W3C CCG Chairs <w3c.ccg@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2020 10:49:39 -0800 (PST)
Thanks to Nate Otto for scribing this week! The minutes
for this week's CCG Verifiable Credentials for Education Task Force telecon are now available:
https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2020-03-02/
Full text of the discussion follows for W3C archival purposes.
Audio from the meeting is available as well (link provided below).
----------------------------------------------------------------
CCG Verifiable Credentials for Education Task Force Telecon Minutes for 2020-03-02
Agenda:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-credentials/2020Feb/0099.html
Topics:
1. Call Notes
2. Introductions & Reintroductions
3. Guest expert Simone Ravaioli discusses European
Credentialing Landscape
Action Items:
1. kimhd to book @AnthonyFCamilleri to speak on a future call.
Organizer:
Christopher Allen and Joe Andrieu and Kim Hamilton Duffy
Scribe:
Nate Otto
Present:
Simone Ravaoli, Leonard Rosenthal, Stuart Sutton, Nate Otto, Kim
Hamilton Duffy, Lluís Alfons Ariño, Juan Caballero, James
Chartrand, Stuart Freeman, Anil Lewis, Matt Lisle, Snorre Lothar
von Gohren Edwin, J. Philipp Schmidt, Phil_Barker, Anthony
Camilleri, Ganesh Annan, Bernhard Borges, Benjamin Young,
Christopher Allen, Chris Winczewski, David I. Lehn, Dave Longley,
Dmitri Zagidulin, Eugen Rochko, Wayne Vaughn
Audio:
https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2020-03-02/audio.ogg
Simone Ravaoli: Hello folks !
Stuart Sutton: I'm getting 408 Request Timeout on connecting to
sip
Nate Otto is scribing.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Today we have @Simone_Ravaioli to present
about the credential landscape. We're happy to expand our focus
beyond what is going on in the US.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: https://www.w3.org/community/credentials/join
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Note, we'll eventually start rotating
scribes. Watch what ottonomy is doing. Nate is a very good
scribe. ;)
Anil Lewis: Anil Lewis present+
Kim Hamilton Duffy: https://www.w3.org/accounts/request
Kim Hamilton Duffy:
https://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/cla/
Topic: Call Notes
Kim Hamilton Duffy: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Check the email agenda for how we use IRC to
run these calls and instructions on how to add yourself to the
queue. All attendees should type present plus as @snorre just did
so that we know you are here. This will get your name on the
attendee list and transcript.
Topic: Introductions & Reintroductions
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We have quite a few new people on the call
today. If you are new and want to introduce yourself, please add
yourself to the queue.
Anthony Camilleri: I'll introduce over chat
Anil Lewis: Sorry i lost connection
Lluís Alfons Ariño: My name is Louis Arinyo. I'm the CIO of a
public university in Spain. I am the convener of a use case
around the European blockchain service
Anil Lewis: Will redial
Snorre Lothar von Gohren Edwin: My name is __ please type __. I
work on a company working out of Uganda, where we are working
with schools to build a better way of proving what you have done
so that you can be hired.
J. Philipp Schmidt: My name is Philipp Schmidt. I work at the
MIT Media Lab but also work with Kim on the Digital Credentials
Consortium.
Anthony Camilleri: Hi all. Its super-noisy where I'm sitting so
if you don't mind, will introduce over chat. I'm Anthony F.
Camilleri, working on implementing the europass digital
credentials infrastructure for the European Commission. Happy to
meet all of you. I'm at anthony@camilleri.com /
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyfcamilleri/
Phil_Barker: My name is Phil Barker. I work on several US-led
projects. I'm here to hear what Simone_Ravaioli has to say about
the credentials landscape in Europe.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: We now have a good 50 minutes for
Simone_Ravaioli's topic and Q&A.
Topic: Guest expert Simone Ravaioli discusses European Credentialing Landscape
Simone Ravaoli:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QQSZgiggrRMSh6NKdn0nvW3MYxQDIFCL6gS75nd34PE/edit?usp=sharing
Simone Ravaoli: [In a dramatic echoing room]. I'll share a link
in the chat to a document we can use for reference as we go
through what I want to cover.
Simone_Ravaioli [we lost his audio]
Simone_Ravaioli is back
Anil Lewis: Hi My name is Anil Lewis. I am a senior architect in
IBM and working on the learner credential network using
Hyperledger Indy
Simone Ravaoli: What I wanted to do is take this opportunity to
share with the group about the credentialing landscape in Europe,
as I have experienced it the last 12-13 years.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Reminder ottonomy, feel free to scribe
lightly where the content is captured in Simone's doc
Simone Ravaoli: By no means is this intended to be a
comprehensive record of what happened. This is what I've seen.
Many of the people on the call have contributed to this work.
Simone Ravaoli: I'll list and quickly address some of the
technical specs I've seen surface in Europe over the years. Then
I will mention some of the high-level European initiatives that
are pertinent to what we are looking at here, as well as some of
the more grassroots projects that are relevant.
Simone Ravaoli: Then we will open it up for discussion to see if
there are action items for us to take this forward.
Simone Ravaoli: The space is lively, I would say. Some
initiatives early on, starting around 2000. The stuff in the
document, some of it is ...out of our collective memory of what
happened, then moving into more recent stuff.
Simone Ravaoli: The first ones CDM, XCRI are around course
metadata, describing what is happening in a course. This was
eventually picked up in the UK by JISC, who started to work on
another version, which they called the XCRI. At the same time,
work was going on in Germany to describe learning content, as
well as in Sweden.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Reminder to all, here is the talk outline:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QQSZgiggrRMSh6NKdn0nvW3MYxQDIFCL6gS75nd34PE/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs
Simone Ravaoli: CEN started a project for harmonization, called
MLO Metadata for Learning Opportunity. This is where I got
involved. If you're familiar with learning in Europe, you're
familiar with the Erasmus scheme, which provides funding for
student learning. There was a desire to extend the Erasmus
experience in a meaningful way.
Simone Ravaoli: This produced a European norm, which was the
MLO. Then the issue started to move to adoption. There was some
great work that was going to harmonize existing workstreams in
Europe, but the traction needed for it to have an impact was not
there. Fortunately a group of implementers in the higher
education space, SIS vendors, stepped into this conversation and
provided the necessary conduit into the market.
Simone Ravaoli: They were able to contribute to the evolution of
the specification and inherited a responsibility to take this to
market, at least to use it in their systems to support the
Erasmus program. MLO was the first proper standard involved in
this.
Simone Ravaoli: MLO did relate to another stream of work,
EuroLMAI for European Learner Mobility, which really added the
achievements piece. These were two standards that became very
important for the evolution of this conversation in Europe. The
specification work was picked up by grassroots organizations
implementing a very bottom-up approach to implement and pilot the
specs.
Simone Ravaoli: At the time I was working for a consortium of
public universities in Europe. The organizations addressed what
went into the interoperability. There were a few pilots, and they
looked to adopt the available specifications. This lasted for a
few years without much uptake.
Simone Ravaoli: The traction created by some of the vendors
raised an issue (for some time it had become a lobbying exercise)
to create appropriate funding schemes for this kind of work. Up
to them there wasn't much funding within the Erasmus program for
technical work (most funding was for research).
Simone Ravaoli: There was a related instrument, Horizon 2020,
but it wasn't a good fit for this work.
Simone Ravaoli: At some stage, the European Commission picked up
on what was happening, and started to create a couple
opportunities for funds to be allocated to this work. The first
project was EMREX, supporting the EuroLMAI work. They are similar
in effort, but different in how the model was implemented, but
they both received two rounds of funding.
Simone Ravaoli: While EMREX was focused on implementing one of
the specifications, another effort ELMO was more learner focused,
giving learners access to their data.
Simone Ravaoli: This initiative (ELMO) was in favor with
leadership and received several rounds of funding and is still
with us. There is a technical component of this, which hopefully
will be able to implement the technical architecture created
through EMREX.
Simone Ravaoli: This was a first approach to keep this
credentialing movement together. There was an effort to map ELMO
to PESC, to synchronize credentials work between Europe and the
US.
Simone Ravaoli: This was not a super sexy thing in the market.
But a few of us stuck with it, feeling it was important to
support across organizations. People trying to get the
interoperability thing done. Paying attention to movers and
shakers in North America. This is a global movement. As much as a
standard can be made anywhere in the world, adoption becomes an
issue.
Simone Ravaoli: How can we crosswalk among standards? We believe
there is a piece of work that needs to be addressed there.
Simone Ravaoli: Digital credentials picked up momentum a few
years ago, with hype around blockchain. There was a clear use
case in education for blockchain. There were many initiatives
springing up, and a parallel effort to try to "keep it together".
Simone Ravaoli: I always felt it was important to document what
was happening in Europe, also tracking who was supporting
initiatives, especially in the European Commission. This brings
us to this conversation today, where we hopefully can find the
right people to keep these initiatives connected and help with
harmonization and crosswalking of these different pieces of work.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I hadn't realized there was an effort to
harmonize with PESC already. We're trying to bring together
people who want to harmonize the content of the claim (IEEE). At
W3C we've been more focused on the wrapper. +1 to keeping some
momentum going for global interoperable standards.
Simone Ravaoli: When you think about Europe, there is an
expectation that the European Commission, the higher authorities
will do something to stimulate the effort. There are several
entities involved.
Simone Ravaoli: The DGs are directors of the different work
areas focused by the commission. We have DG for Education, DG for
Employment and DG Connect, which is looking at the digital
transformation for the Commission.
Simone Ravaoli: Within the DG for Employment, one of the major
efforts that is ongoing is the Europass project. Europass is an
existing flagship project of the Commission, running for 14
years. It is a portfolio/document platform. This platform has
been in open heart surgery for several months now; new version
will be published around May.
Simone Ravaoli: This new endeavor involves focus on a new
Europass Digital Credentials Infrastructure (EDCI)
Simone Ravaoli: Some of the experts from that effort are on this
call. This new specification will be extremely important down the
road. Also, as a result of the European Blockchain Service
Infrastructure work, that led to 4 different use cases, one of
them diplomas.
Anthony Camilleri: That's an excellent way to characterise the
difference Simone
Simone Ravaoli: As you've seen this effort can be approached
from different angles. If the EDCI is looking at the content of a
claim, the EBSI is looking at the envelope for the claim. There
is some coordination between these efforts; hopefully they will
be able to go forward hand in hand.
Simone Ravaoli: I'll call out in the document a number of
projects around EDCI in Europe (feel free to add to this document
if you know others). One honorable mention to touch on: an
important element of developing the credentialing landscape in
Europe was the Rome Student Systems and Standards Group RS3G.
Simone Ravaoli: RS3G was the seat of several projects that
followed that. You may have heard of the Groningen Declaration
Network, which is now an established initiative with global
reach.
Simone Ravaoli: EMREX was originally "RS3G Mobility Project".
Simone Ravaoli: So this is a bit of a slide over what has been
happening in Europe. Let me call out my European colleagues on
the call. Anyone want to add?
Leonard Rosenthal: Simone, could you comment: One of my biggest
concerns is the relation between this work and EIDIS (sp?).
WIthout that alignment we can't use these credentials legally in
the EU?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I think Nacho Alamillo is doing a lot of work
on that?
Simone Ravaoli: Lots of issues roll up to "identity". Some work
has been done on European Blockchain Partnership on Self
Sovereign Identity. There is ongoing work to look at that and to
see how an SSI layer could be wrapped around this. There are
national initiatives and centralized European efforts.
Anthony Camilleri: @Lenoardr if I may supplement this: Europass
Digitally Signed Credentials will require signature using an
eIDAS compliant digital signature/seal. so all Europass DSC will
have legal value from launch in May.
Lluís Alfons Ariño: Within EBSI the so called eIDas bridge is
been developed, so for the so called VeID it will be possible to
have a trustframework to enabkle legally VCs
S/EIDIS/eIDAS
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Nacho Alamillo is doing some work in the
concept of the European SSI framework and eIDAS specifically
around levels of assurance. Looking forward to that.
Simone Ravaoli: The SSI work at the European level is also
looking at other similar initiatives, particular what is going on
in Canada with the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework (sp?). There are
more initiatives trying this model and adding the SSI element
into it. Certainly Nacho is working on one and presenting soon on
a webinar.
Jim_Goodell: Simone, you mentioned one of the projects on the
"envelope?" Could you same more about where they are and timing?
Juan Caballero: Nacho is speaking on Alex Preukschat's Webinar
series tomorrow!
Juan Caballero:
https://ssimeetup.org/eidas-regulation-anchoring-trust-self-sovereign-identity-systems-ignacio-alamillo-webinar-49/
Simone Ravaoli: One of the use cases under the European
Blockchain Service Infrastructure. Can I call on Louis to speak
up?
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Thanks Juan!
Simone Ravaoli: Louis is leading this work
Louis (sp?): Yes, Nacho Alamillo is leading this team with EBSI.
There is also another project the so called eIDAS Bridge, which
will let us link to qualified service providers to sign
verifiable credentials. This will let us extend the eIDAS Trust
Framework to the Verifiable Credentials landscape.
Juan Caballero: It's Lluís (double-L)
Louis (sp?): EBSI has standardized a "envelope" to containerize
and transport information. The contents of the credentials are
described using the Europass EDCI standard.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: S/Louis/Lluís
Llúis: On Feb 12 the membership of EDCI was opened for member
states. On March 24 there will be a meeting in Brussels where
there will be open source software announced and made available
on GitHub. then anyone can see what is there and make use of all
the code.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I stumbled across this recently, note VCs as
xml:
https://github.com/european-commission-europass/EDCI-Data-Model
Snorre Lothar von Gohren Edwin: Is this Github repo he mentioned
something that will be linked to somehow?
Llúis: The interoperability between different DLTs... first
version of EBSI there are two DLTs (__ and hyperledger fabric),
the identity for entities for any DID is based on the Ethereum
platform. Another use case: documents to be notarized are on
Hyperledger fabric DLT. EBSI is the "envelope" for all these and
for how entities should be described in Verifiable Credentials.]
Thank you Llúis !
Llúis: How to describe any educational claim is from the Europass
EDCI
Juan Caballero: Sn/orre, I believe the repos go public later?
BlazPodgorelec: Here is one point missed so far, Main Digital
Europe for All, which is going to implement a pilot across four
universities in Europe. One main point is the bridge between
eIDAS bridge to Self-sovereign identities.
Juan Caballero: https://www.de4a.eu/
BlazPodgorelec: There is also CDCX which is piloted in four
universities in different countries; implements blockchain ERC721
token
Anthony Camilleri: @Blazpodgorelec is the ERC-721 initiative
linked to credentify/0xcert?
Error: (IRC nickname 'blazpodgorelec' not
recognized)[2020-03-02T16:54:14.463Z] <BlazPodgorelec>
@AnthonyFCamilleri https://eductx.org/
Simone Ravaoli: BlazPodgorelec this is great. In the last couple
years there has been an outburst of different initiatives funded
by different instruments of the EC. Maybe you could add it to the
document I shared. This may create a huge list of initiatives,
that have the one feature to be connected to funds from the
Commission. I think there is a sustainability issue. They create
pilots that go well in a network, but how to scale and make
interoperable!
Juan Caballero: EIDAS for people listening in, is a little
uneven from country to country. Countries that have been
investing in a lot of eIDAS compliant infrastructure all along
(and have eIDAS contractors and companies and private sector
parties willing to experiment) are at the forefront of this
(Spain). Germany is desperate to catch up and is funding at the
federal level companies to catch up (or "meet them halfway").
Hopefully this will be less uneven
A few years from now.
Juan Caballero: It's not me!
WHo was that last on the queue?
Juan Caballero: That was me
(Oh, it is just the noise that is not you)
Kim Hamilton Duffy:
https://github.com/european-commission-europass/EDCI-Data-Model
Kim Hamilton Duffy: AnthonyFCamilleri might not be able to talk
over voice, but I did find.. some people were asking about GitHub
repos referenced, and I found the link above.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: What I found really interesting is that they
are expressing VCs as XML instead of the JSON and JSON-LD
expressions we have broadly seen. VC is just a data model, so it
is valid to express in XML. As we start moving forward, are we
going to find communities or systems who find this easier to
express as XML because they're more familiar with it, or the time
to take to port their existing systems to JSON might be more
work.
Anthony Camilleri: I will add on this, reason for expressing VCs
as XML is that eIDAS signatures only support standards for
signature as XML for signatures embedded in the filed (XADES
standards). There is no eIDAS JSON standard.
Anthony Camilleri: @Kim that is our official repo of the project
Kim Hamilton Duffy: I'm curious if anyone can provide more
context on that repo or project.
Anthony Camilleri: An Interoperability portal will be linked to
go on with it in the coming weeks
@Larinyo can you share some info with me about eIDAS Bridge? pls
Leonardr_: Anthony is correct that at this moment there is no
JSON signature standard. We have an early draf of a JADES (sp?)
standard, but today you would not be able to do it in JSON
because there isn't a standard yet.
Thinking about a case where a universal JSON wrapper that could
carry an encoded XML payload.
Anthony Camilleri: @Leonardr would love to follow up about this
work off call. Would appreciate if you drop me a line
(anthony@camilleri.com)
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Yes, that's a struggle that we are
encountering. For JSON-LD there is a set of signature suites. For
people using JSON, they typically use JWT for signatures. The
format and signature suites are part of what might be making them
more comlicated.
Leonardr_: None of those JSON-based things have been standardized
in the context of the European Commission
Juan Caballero: +1
Current work for the actual revision of the eIdas standard (just
started) & eIdas bridge
Reach me at lluisalfons.arino@urv.cat
Simone Ravaoli: A couple more things as we close the hour.
Arguably, speaking on the EDCI data model, that is the official
github and it is open for people logging issues. Some of the
issues I hope people should log are issues that we'd hope people
would resolve in the next version of EDCI
Simone Ravaoli: It would be good to have a mapping exercise,
similar to what EdMatrix or what Credential Engine competency
mapping work has done.
Simone Ravaoli: I would start from the 3 that are relevant and
being used.
Juan Caballero: EDCI + EBSI + EMREX
Juan Caballero: (Are the 3 he said to start from)
Simone Ravaoli: Another action item: involve experts who are not
yet involved in this call to deep dive into topics that we
touched on like EDCI, EMREX.
(Thanks @juancaballero )
Juan Caballero: (It takes a village, @ottonomy ;D )
T3 Innovation Network is also doing cross-standards
mapping...follow-on from the Credential Engine mapping.
Simone Ravaoli: Look at the issue globally, understanding that
there are two epicenters.
Anthony Camilleri: Happy to give one at a future meeting :-)
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Those are great suggestions. One: the
mapping similar to Edmatrix -- there is a lot of meaty efforts
that are mature. But there are other efforts described here that
we don't have equivalents of in North America. +1 to have a deep
dive on EDCI (the others as well). But EDCI is making design
decisions and actually building a verifiable credential. We could
benefit a lot from that conversation.
ACTION: kimhd to book @AnthonyFCamilleri to speak on a future
call.
Simone Ravaoli: Thx @AnthonyDCamilleri
Kim Hamilton Duffy: There are also efforts in Singapore that
would be good to bring into the conversation.
Juan Caballero: Thx @AnthonyDCamilleri ! looking forward
Lluís Alfons Ariño: Sorry guys, I have to commute to another
meeting
Kim Hamilton Duffy: Thanks to Simone to presenting in and
bringing in other experts.
Kim Hamilton Duffy: To folks outside of Europe, this can seem
like an alphabet soup of acronyms, thanks for making sense of it
and showing relations.
Received on Tuesday, 3 March 2020 18:49:57 UTC