RMIT future-proofs the university-to-student connection with Microsoft Entra Verified ID

Suppose there was a form of electronic credential that you could own and control yourself, securely and easily. Suppose that as a student, you didn’t have to wait for 14 days for the identification card that entitled you to benefits like student discounts and library privileges. And imagine that one credential would see you through your education and far beyond—no more time-consuming requests for your transcripts and other documents needed for graduate school or your career.

That’s what the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) wished for its 95,000 students around the world. Like other universities, it also grappled with the aim of keeping alumni connected throughout their careers. As COVID-19 began to change the way students attended the university, this increased the urgency around several use cases already under discussion at RMIT. But stakeholders had to navigate the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other data security laws of the 230 or so countries that are home to RMIT students as RMIT set out to increase efficiency and student convenience, lower costs, and amplify security.

There wasn’t a technology that perfectly lent itself to the RMIT vision, until the team discovered Verified ID. RMIT finally had the answer it always envisioned.

Building technology excellence around the world

RMIT offers a rich program focused on technology, business, and design, extending its innovative focus into health science, law, media, and social sciences. In addition to its three Australian campuses and two research sites, it offers programs with partner organizations in Austria, Belgium, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Netherlands, Singapore, and Sri Lanka. RMIT also boasts two campuses in Vietnam and a research and industry collaboration center in Spain.

Naturally, students attracted to an institution as renowned for groundbreaking advances as RMIT think about every aspect of their data’s use. The university is clear that its students are digital natives who have grown up needing to think about how and why the data that exists about them is used. RMIT believes that this creates an implicit obligation in their universities and other organizations that engage with them about how that data is used.

When RMIT considered the challenges of managing and securing student identities, it recognized a chance to carve out a vision for the future. After all, its IT department believes that innovation is everyone’s business at RMIT.

Ajay Radhakrishnan, Enterprise Architect at RMIT University, expands, “We focused on missed opportunities. Asking ourselves how we could create quick wins in improving identity technology, we saw potential for generating future successes by adding our strategic emphasis on lifelong learning.”

Three use cases rose to the top of the list. RMIT wanted to create a verifiable credential (VC) that: 

• Students can use to access the RMIT library and get discounts at the café or store on campus.
• Alumni can use to convey their transcript from the university to a prospective employer.
• To prove that university trainings for security and compliance had been satisfactorily completed.
  
  

Bringing together multiple organizations

For this project, RMIT first turned to its considerable internal talent. Delighted to tap into RMIT’s own global research and thought leadership, the department partnered with Michael Fairbairn, Associate Director of Business Operations and Engagement at the Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT University, to sketch out requirements.

The RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub is the university’s research center focused on the social science underlying blockchain technology—the system of linking cryptographically protected records, or blocks, to create a decentralized information chain that grows with each transaction. “Our team quickly identified credentialling as a use case for blockchain in the education context,” says Fairbairn. “The COVID-19 pandemic really accelerated that need because we didn’t want students to come to campus to pick up their ID cards. We used Microsoft Entra Verified ID to digitize the process and gain a lot of efficiencies.”

Working with the RMIT IT team, Fairbairn convened a multidisciplinary team, including architects from the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (oCTO). The RMIT team worked with a team of Microsoft experts and Condatis, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with Identity and Access Management competencies at the Gold level.

Benefitting from a close triumvirate

The internal team evaluated other technology providers, but only Microsoft offered the blockchain capabilities and supportive ecosystem that RMIT needed.

RMIT drew on its relationship with Microsoft to develop its ideas for identity management. Microsoft and RMIT have shared a strong and close relationship for many years. A university of RMIT’s size and complexity presents a great place to prove out emerging technologies while also driving scale. Contemplating its goals, the RMIT team was confident not only in Microsoft technologies but also in the company’s approachability as a collaborator. The department depends on strong, credible partners to deliver amazing, world-class possibilities. Microsoft stood out among the potential solution providers. RMIT needed a provider that could back up the glossy marketing brochures with proven capabilities. It chose Microsoft.

Mani Sfatantes, Lead Consultant Architect on the oCTO team at RMIT University, appreciated the possibilities offered by RMIT’s existing Microsoft technologies, like Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), part of Microsoft Entra, and ION—an open decentralized identifier network that runs on the Bitcoin blockchain. “Many of the components we needed were readily available to us within the Microsoft suite. RMIT uses Azure AD today for student and staff login as an identity provider. ION is an open, permissionless Layer 2 network based on the purely deterministic Sidetree protocol based on open standards,” says Sfatantes. “It also makes perfect sense to tap into the knowledge resources Microsoft provides.”

Fairbairn agrees emphatically. “We’re in a very innovative new space that is evolving quickly,” he says. “Our Microsoft contact introduced us to Condatis. Despite the unknowns in this fast-changing space, we felt a lot of confidence in Microsoft and the partner it recommended as we went through the decentralized identity journey together.”

Compatibility with open standards is key to optimizing innovation. “We consider this solution part of a bigger ecosystem that will connect and cooperate with other ecosystems,” adds Radhakrishnan. “We’re exploring linking student credentials to the transportation authorities in Victoria and Melbourne to provide students with discounts on those systems. Microsoft embracing open-source technologies opens possibilities like these.”

For Shamiem Smail, Architect on the oCTO team at RMIT University, the team’s close collaboration with Microsoft and Condatis was vital to laying the groundwork for the future. “I think our robust conversations around embryonic topics was one of the biggest wins,” she says. “Condatis and Microsoft essentially put a wrapper for us around each technology, which made it more useable and understandable. If a topic needed to be unpacked, they made sure that we had the background to approach discussions at the level where we needed to be.”

Taking the student credential from concept to proof in two weeks

The team created a proof of value (POV) application for each use case in just two weeks.

A select group of alumni and students tested the POV applications, using multifactor authentication on mobile devices to access their data via a QR code. The results, so far, promise significant cost savings and efficiency gains. “We currently budget several hundreds of thousands of dollars for credentialling, but we hope to free that up for other uses through our digitized approach,” says Radhakrishnan.

Smail points to less tangible advantages. “The student testers were very excited,” says Smail. “We prioritize the user experience, and it makes a significant impact to provide a digital credential to students in seconds instead of the usual 14 days.” The hectic weeks leading up to the first day of classes may cause students to forget to register for their school identification card before their arrival on campus. That could lead to pain points in day-to-day experiences like trying to enter campus buildings. Adds Sfatantes, “Our POV apps represent a huge step toward being able to manage your identity from a single device.”

Fairbairn foresees enormous potential to make life easier not just for RMIT students but for students everywhere—while keeping alumni connected better than ever before. “We’re encouraged by the potential to accelerate digital transformation within the education sector using technologies like Microsoft Entra Verified ID,” he says. “We look forward to working closely with Microsoft to take this project forward.”

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