DCC transfers stewardship of Learner Credential Wallet to the OpenWallet Foundation
Digital Credential Consortium transfers stewardship of Learner Credential Wallet to the OpenWallet Foundation
By Alex Higuera
The Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC), an international network of post-secondary institutions housed at MIT Open Learning, has transferred stewardship of its open source Learner Credential Wallet (LCW) to the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), an initiative of the Linux Foundation.
“At the DCC, we believe working openly and collaboratively produces better, more equitable technology systems,” says Kerri Lemoie, director of the DCC. “With this transition, the OpenWallet Foundation will expand the wallet’s reach and support its continued adoption among learners, educational institutions, employers, and other stakeholders.”
The DCC works to advance the use of portable, verifiable digital credentials in higher education. The consortium began development on the LCW with grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education in 2020. The LCW is an open source mobile wallet for securely storing and sharing digital credentials that is needed to promote the adoption of alternatives to paper credentials. Since then, the DCC has continued to iterate on the wallet, improving ease of use and adding features such as a PDF export functionality.
The LCW application allows learners to store and share any kind of Verifiable Credential — meaning any achievement that follows the W3C Verifiable Credentials web standard, a widely referenced framework for making claims on the web in secure, portable ways. Verifiable credentials include Open Badges 3.0, which are used for learning and employment credentials.
With the transfer of stewardship, the LCW will now benefit from OWF’s expertise in developing interoperable, open-source digital wallet technologies. The DCC will maintain leadership in the development of the wallet, and continue to provide a production level app for iOS and Android. (See the new repository.)
The OWF will continue to build on the DCC’s work to expand the wallet’s reach and functionality within the broader ecosystem of digital credentials, ensuring interoperability with other digital wallets. This will also contribute to the broader goal of establishing an ecosystem where learners can maintain control over their academic records and share them with confidence. The Learner Credential Wallet is already helping learners manage and share their academic achievements in a secure, portable format, and it will continue to play a crucial role in how credentials are issued, stored, and validated across the globe.
As the wallet expands its use, it will contribute to shaping the future of credentialing, providing learners, institutions, and employers with a trusted way to recognize and validate academic and professional accomplishments. To learn more about the DCC and their work, visit their website.
DCC transfers stewardship of Learner Credential Wallet to the OpenWallet Foundation was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.