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Creator and Implementation Architect of Digital Re.naissance era
The project aims to provide a solution to the problem of fake diplomas and academic transcripts by creating a secure technical and organizational framework using state-of-the-art technologies like qualified electronic signatures with timestamping.
The project goal is to create awareness around trust-enabling technologies in the education field, by enabling universities, students, and employers to communicate diplomas and transcripts in a high level of trust. The need for trust in education has become more and more obvious due to the diploma fraud schemes reported worldwide in the past couple of years.
Recently, Romanian authorities discovered a huge fraud scheme related to university diplomas, with thousands of fake diplomas on the market. The worst example are diplomas of fake Romanian doctors operating in Italy. Another fraud scheme was discovered in France (a French university has delivered diplomas for Chinese students residing in China), and there are thousands of fraud examples of various kinds all over the world.
Electronic diplomas are currently issued by a few pioneering educational institutions in the U.S. (University of Colorado). Norway has also implemented a centralized system for issuing electronic diplomas and transcripts.
The project is a new initiative that will benefit from the experience of these universities and the technical know-how of the partners, as the e-signature and timestamping technology has been successfully used since 1998 in other profitable online transactional markets. The worldwide online service aim is to introduce e-diplomas and academic credentials verifications at a global level. After several informal meetings with the strategic partners held all along 2024, the project will launched to market in 2025.
The business goal is to federate all directories of alumni in the education world.
For this, we are linking universities, graduate students, and recruiters.
To reach our ambitions business goal, we'll propose a full range of services to recruiters and other third parties, starting with the simple real-time verification of the electronic diploma:
- Verification 2€
- Attestation 4€
- Electronic transcript 6€
- PDF Electronic diploma, 8€
This business model is currently used in a couple of visionary countries so is battle-tested,viable, used already commercially by around 10
Universities. The service is free for Universities but charges the employer or the graduate 5 USD
per transcript.
The business model used to issue electronic diplomas and transcripts is simple, yet effective,
based on three principles:
- International NGOs and universities (universities
federations, AUF, Unesco ) will do most of the marketing and dissemination. A foundation for education will be created. Technical partners are in the second plan and provide technical services
to the foundation.
- We share revenues with the universities (10% to 20 % of
the revenues)
- We promote high ethical, technical, and security
standards, ethical charter of the utilization of university data, encryption, electronic signature based on open standards
The key individuals who will be involved in this project share a strong commitment to the adoption of electronic diplomas.
- Eduard Tric the owner and CEO of l00p.ro was the former president of ISOC Romania and is currently considered as one of the pioneers of electronic signatures, having set up the first electronic certification authority in France back in 1998. He successfully designed an identity and trust software, Eupki, that won the innovation prize in Washington DC and was awarded by the European Commission with a 1 million euro grant in their FP5 research program.
- Prof. Dr. Borka Jerman-Blažič is a full professor at the University of Ljubljana, Department of Economics, and is heading the Laboratory for Open Systems and Networks at the Jožef Stefan Institute. She is teaching undergraduate courses in electronic communications and information security and postgraduate courses in Telecommunication Services and Technologies, Legal aspects and standards in ICT and E-commerce. Prof. Dr.. Borka Jerman-Blažič is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, a member of the ACM, member of the New York Academy of Science since 1991, member of IFIP. She was appointed member to UNECE/CEFAT UN (Economic Commission for Europe) group for Internet enterprise development, appointed member of the eTEN management committee of the EU and a member of the EU FP7 Programming Committee on Security, Chair (2004-2007) of the Internet Society of Europe (www.isoc-ecc.org), Distinguished Member of Slovene Society for Informatics, member of the editorial board of the international journal of Technology Enhanced e-Learning. She is holding a Plaque of appreciation from the Thai branch of IFIP and ACM for her services in Internet development and awards for best papers (IARIA IEEE conference). Prof. Dr.Borka Jerman-Blažič has been involved in more than 150 international conferences and workshops as a speaker, invited speaker, and chair or a member of the programming committees. She has published more than 90 papers in refereed scientific journals, 154 communications on scientific meetings, 15 Chapters in scientific books, 6 books and other 142 scientific contributions. She has wide experience in editorship from books published by Kluwer P.C and IOS Press (2001-2004).
- Qasim Khan, Chairman of Isoc Pakistan is a Professional Engineer with 12 years of Broadband Telecoms experience in Wireless and Wire-line platforms with a rich history of Carrier & Enterprise solutions to major industry segments.
- Chris Grundemann, founding Chair of CO ISOC is an experienced network engineer, entrepreneur, and active participant in the ARIN policy process.
- Didier Oillo is a long-term internet pioneer and well-known promoter of ICT in French-speaking countries. He is now the director of the ICT division of Agence pour la Francophonie, gathering more than 700 french speaking Universities in 77 countries around the planet.
- Pascal Colin has over 20 years of experience in top management positions with IT companies like Thomson (currently known as Thales), Sagem, Matra S&I and EADS.
- Before joining Axetel as Business development and EU projects manager, Elena Zvarici worked in the Business Development department of Devoteam. She has worked on numerous Axetel projects related to the adoption of new technologies in the administration.
In addition to the core team, the project has acquired the support of several influential advisers :
- Former secretary of state at the Ministry of Labour, Patrascu Denisa is now a counselor at the Romanian Senate.
- Professor at Bucharest University, Varujan Pambuccian has been a member of the Romanian parliament since 1996. He is the author of the Romanian electronic signature bills ( electronic signature, electronic invoice, electronic archiving)
- Counsellor of Romanian president Basescu, Dean of the faculty of political science at Bucharest University, Cristian Preda is now a member of the European parliament.
- Lecturer in charge of the new-media department at Babes-Bolyai University, member of the Cluj Center of Lifelong and Distance Learning Rodica Mocan brings her experience in the Romanian and European diplomas and academic transcripts issuing process.
It is widely known that young graduates are keen on adopting new technologies. The project aims to promote the use of electronic signatures and raise the level of trust between the three main actors involved in the e-diploma lifecycle: universities, graduates, and employers.
Another major objective of the project is to fight against fraud. In some countries, graduates can have similar names. The use of electronic certificates can help disambiguate the identity of the graduate by using other elements than the name.
While applying for a job, a candidate can attach his electronic diploma to his CV. Two main problems are thus solved. The employer could have the immediate assurance that the candidate has indeed completed the studies he claims in his CV; The candidate will no longer need legalized paper copies to send to each potential employer.
The project can indirectly contribute to the creation of substantial financial economies for graduates and subsequently reduce carbon emissions, by reducing the amount of paper used in the process.
Last but not least, as the Norwegian example shows us, the adoption of electronic diplomas by universities and Ministries of Education can contribute to speeding up the process of admission into secondary education.
How does the e-diplomas and transcripts service work for the universities and other educational partners?
- the university signs the ethical charter and partnership
- the university provides the alumni database (last 10 to 30 years) for the initialization, and in the
future the yearly updates. The data is owned by the university, which is also responsible for its
accuracy and integrity.
- the portal takes the requests for the four services (verification, attestation, transcript, e-diploma),
coming from the recruiters or the graduates and alerts the university. The university treats the
information and creates the requested document. The document is eventually sent to the requester.
The only service provided in real-time is the verification.
- based on the number of transactions, the portal pays back the university regularly (monthly or quarterly)
Relevant public information related to recent diploma fraud schemes in Romania, France, and all over the globe : Online fake diplomas generators :
*. http://www.diplomasandtranscripts.com/
*. http://www.noveltyworksdegrees.com/
*. http://www.diplomacompany.com/index.php?target=profiles&mode=add
*. The definition of the term "Diploma mill" by Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill
France: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/World/Story/STIStory_364272.html
Romania:
http://www.romanianewswatch.com/2009/04/romania-probes-fake-diploma-scam.html
No Third Degree for Diploma Mills:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2004/03/62689?currentPage=all
Relevant information about standards used to create legal electronic diplomas :
- The ISO 32000-1:2008 PDF open standard was published by the ISO on July 1, 2008, so PDF is no longer a proprietary standard.
- The archiving version pdf/a is a subset of ODF and is defined by ISO 19005-1:2005 standard. There are many software tools available today to produce signed pdf/in various environments and operating systems.
Relevant information about the state-of-the-art implementation of ISO PDF-based standards:
- The signed and stamped pdf/a is used by the government of Asturia in Spain for their official documents and bills.
- The French government recommends signed and stamped PDF as the format of choice for documents that will not change or expire over time (like e-diplomas ).
Contact: sales@l00p.ro +40744445937
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