Maltese government launches Learning Machine’s blockchain records platform

(Clockwise) Silvio Schembri, Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy, and Innovation; Evarist Bartolo, Minister for Education and Employment; Dr. Dan Hughes, President and COO, Learning Machine; Dr. Francis Fabri, Permanent Secretary, Ministry for Education and Employment.

The Ministry for Education and Employment of the Republic of Malta announced in a press release CoinReport received the signing of an agreement with Learning Machine Technologies to launch the first nation-state pilot of blockchain credentials.

Under the contract, Maltese workers and learners can securely store all of their records of lifelong learning in one place, demonstrate that they own them and share them with anyone in the world for free.

Employers and others can promptly confirm that a qualification is genuine through independent blockchain verification, saving considerable time and money. This enables establishments to avert deception and shield their brands while giving workers and learners full control of their official records.

“For the first time, Maltese learners have a way to keep track of their lifelong achievements in one place, with the flexibility to share them with whomever they choose at no cost,” said Evarist Bartolo, minister for Education and Employment in Malta, in the release we received. “Maltese businesses will find that hiring workers with the right qualifications has gotten much easier. This is a win/win for Malta, whose skilled workforce is among the primary drivers of its economic success.”

Recipients can download a free app, the Blockcerts Wallet (available for iOS and Android), which manages the private and public keys that enable them to own their blockchain-based records. This app connects with issuing institutions to receive, verify, store and share Blockcerts. The wallet also verifies that the person showing a blockchain certificate is the one to whom it was issued.

As soon as a Blockcert is received from an issuer, the recipient owns it forever. The Blockcert stays confirmable even if the issuing institution ceases to operate, averting the loss of verifiable records in case of economic crises, natural disasters and wars. Blockcerts can also be effortlessly transferred to other software that uses the Blockcerts standard, meaning that recipients aren’t reliant on a single institution or vendor to store, verify and share their records.

Natalie Smolenski, VP of business development for Learning Machine, commented, “The world is changing. Students and workers are more mobile than ever before in human history, regularly changing schools and jobs, crossing borders, and remotely working across jurisdictions. The importance of providing individuals with a seamless way to translate their education and skills into opportunities in the workforce and lifelong learning, wherever in the world they go, cannot be overstated.”

Blockcert was created by Learning Machine with the MIT Media Lab in 2016 and is published as an open resource under the MIT License. It is a set of free reference libraries that any institution, government or vendor is able to use to write their own applications for issuing and verifying official records on the blockchain. MIT and Learning Machine decided to open source the standard in order to deliver maximum interoperability, longevity and portability of official records for an increasingly global and mobile workforce and student body. The enterprise software of Learning Machine is created using the Blockcerts standard to make the most of recipient ownership and avert vendor lock-in.

Image via the Newswire press release