If you’re living in the tiny island nation of Andorra, officials have a solution for you so that you don’t have to go looking for a certificate to prove your university degrees anymore.
EuropaPress, a Spanish-language newspaper, reported today that Andorra’s government is looking at implementing blockchain in a system that will use the immutable ledger’s consensus-based platform to provide evidence of earned academic degrees.
Officials cite savings in administrative expenses as part of what’s behind the move, and some analysts are suggesting this will improve local access to higher education.
The story gets, as old Lewis Carroll would have said, “curiouser and curiouser” when you look at who the partners are – Andorra’s major telecom company is reportedly behind this move, which echoes a program instituted by the Maltese government just yesterday.
Earlier in the month, the Russians also announced similar plans.
Talking about “education quality control,” the Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Education and Science plans to utilize blockchain and application to graduation examination.
“We also talked about the use of blockchain technology in the USE, and this year this technology will be used in the USE, using new technologies of printing and scanning …,” The Russian office’s Head of the Federal Service Sergey Kravtsov said earlier in the month according to CoinRivet.
While U.S. schools have promoted blockchain as well, we seem to lack the concerted “doc-proof” system that these other countries are implementing.
Nor is this the only initiative Andorra and its institutions are pursuing.
“The main objective of this new technology is to influence society directly and provide greater transparency in networks, thus allowing greater fluidity in transactions and operations that any user or company wants to carry out,” wrote AndBank officials in a recent press release. “An applicable example is a financial transaction, which is as fast as sending an email and also ensures that the data is not leaked or pirated.”
If a country with a population of under 100,000 people can successfully navigate blockchain systems and implement them in public life, we’re well on our way to the kind of critical mass that will support a financial world where digital coins largely replace national paper currency. Keep an eye on these happenings as you plan your cryptocurrency entry point or otherwise evaluate your portfolio.