UNICEF in search of firm to co-design youth digital credentialing system

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), under its Generation Unlimited (GenU) initiative, is looking for a company to create and pilot a digital credentialing pathway to streamline youth employability.

GenU is a UNICEF-led initiative launched in 2018 with the aim of connecting 1.4 billion youth in the world to a wide spectrum of opportunities in the areas of education, employment and entrepreneurship. The public-private-youth partnership has the main objective of ensuring that every youth in the world is either in school, learning a trade, training in an art, or be in paid employment by the year 2030.

According to a tender announcement, the implementing partner of the credentialing system will be expected to build some sort of a digital ‘skills wallet’ to make it possible for young people, especially those who may not have access to traditional education, to prove their skills to employers, schools, or training programs using a secure and trusted digital format.

UNICEF states that the system aims to address the problem of “fragmented and non-portable learning credentials that limit young people’s access to jobs, education, and opportunities.”

Companies or organizations with expertise in digital identity, credentialing, and education technology, have up to February 16 to bid for the contract.

Per the announcement, the system aims to support inclusive education and employment opportunities by making skills more visible and portable across borders, and to promote equity and accessibility especially for marginalized youth who may lack formal qualifications.

The partner to be eventually selected will have the responsibility to build infrastructure that is secure, scalable, and interoperable, and one which can ensure that credentials presented by youth are recognized by employers, education institutions, and governments wherever in the world.

Other responsibilities include designing and establishing the technical platform, working with UNICEF, GenU and other stakeholders to make sure they align with global standards for digital verifiable credentials, piloting the system in some regions of the world with selected GenU member organizations, and providing the necessary capacity-building and training for institutions and youth to make sure they use the system effectively.

UNICEF says the initiative is inspired by a similar one dubbed the LearnerID digital credential wallet which allows young people to “securely receive, store, manage, and share verified credentials within a partner-managed environment.”

The digital credentialing pathway project will be implemented in phases, the first of which be about discovery and co-design. Phase two will involve framework and system design, after which there will be the product development and integration phase. The fourth stage will involve pre-pilot testing and pilot rollout.

Verifiable credentials, for VCs for short, are witnessing a surge in global adoption as decentralized and privacy-first digital ID systems gain steam.

Article Topics

digital ID  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  student ID  |  tender  |  UNICEF  |  verifiable credentials