Bahamian job seekers will now be able to share and verify their
educational certificates from anywhere, thus reducing bureaucracy and
enhancing convenience.
This is after the Commonwealth of the Bahamas became the first
country in Latin America and the Caribbean region to implement a
blockchain-based nation-wide credentialing system known as Bahamas
Blockcerts, according to The Nassau Guardian. Through these
nationally-accredited digital certificates, the government of the
Caribbean country aims to enhance how national educational
qualifications including certificates, academic degrees and diplomas are
created, issued, viewed and verified.
The first Bahamas Blockcert digital certificates were issued late in
June by the country’s National Training Agency (NTA) to 78 participants
of an initiative meant to prepare trainees for the workforce.
Collection of Digital Certificate Links
Participants of the initiative store their Bahamas Blockcert
Portfolios on a mobile app and this basically consists of a collection
of URLs which uniquely identify every digital certificate that an
individual has earned.
Rather than requiring paper certificates all that individuals with
Bahamas Blockcerts will need to do is add the website links to their
resumes. These links can also be sent to potential employers who will
then be able to view as well as verify the authenticity of the digital
certificates. In the future, the NTA intends to issue the blockchain
digital certificates for all its training courses offered to unemployed
citizens as well as those adding to their skills.
Currently, the National Training Agency of the Bahamas is the only
body that is issuing the blockchain digital certificates though there
are plans to add 23 national agencies to the project. Some of these
agencies include the Bahamas Technical and Vocational Institute, the
Department of Inland Revenue, University of the Bahamas as well as the
National Insurance Board.
Beyond Educational Certificates
In future, the Bahamas Blockcerts initiative will be expanded to
other sectors to include tax compliance certificates, business licenses
and other documents.
“We piloted the initiative with the NTA, but the vision is to have
Bahamas Blockcerts form a core part of the government’s National
Blockchain Strategy,” the minister of labor in the Bahamas, Dion
Foulkes, told The Nassau Guardian. “We are talking about using the technology for
citizen security, to improve the land registry and a host of other
initiatives.”
As CCN has previously reported, similar initiatives in other parts of
the world aimed at simplifying the verification of education
certificates using blockchain have been conducted by among others the
French academic institution, Leonardo da Vinci Engineering School, and the San Francisco, California-based Holberton School.
In both cases, using blockchain was considered more secure, cheaper and
efficient compared to traditional methods of verification.
