The Singaporean government has developed a blockchain platform, OpenCert, to verify education certificates from 18 institutions. The platform is backed by SkillsFuture Singapore, the Government Technology Agency (GovTech), Ngee Ann Polytechnic and the Ministry of Education.

Created by GovTech, OpenCert works by saving each certificate with a cryptographic stamp that is applied to the certificate’s data, which is then sent to the individual recipient.

The verification can then be checked to see if it has been tampered with or changed since its initial issuance. This adds to the legitimacy of prospective employee credentials. Additionally, the new process will make organizations more efficient than when using the paper method.

According to various reports, the 18 institutions in Singapore, including the National University of Singapore and Ngee Ann Polytechnic, will issue graduates with OpenCerts certificates which will be stored in each person’s Skills Passports account under Singapore’s SkillsFuture national skills training movement.

Although Bahrain University has a similar scheme, the project is the first of its kind within the national level of government and could pave the way for further blockchain adoption in the area of bureaucracy.

GovTech’s chief executive, Kok Ping, believes in OpenCerts project, as he said:

“We see enormous potential for deploying the OpenCerts technology to develop secure and reliable certificate verification and issuance regimes in other sectors.

The technology, which is at the root of all cryptocurrencies, is being harnessed in lots of various ways. Asian countries are leading the push towards its adoption.

For example, Simon Piff, vice-president, security and blockchain research at IDC Asia-Pacific, seemed to allude to this in an interview where he said:

“As we see the emergence of the concept of digital trust, blockchain is a key ingredient in delivering this trust, at scale, across many markets, allowing a new pace of business interaction that had previously been restricted by process and approval challenges.”