We now know that shifts in technology and new developments in AI have serious ramifications for education, especially post-secondary education. Credentials, including micro-credentials, are here to stay, and it is important to have mechanisms that allow all, including certificate-awarding institutions and employers, to verify these credentials, easily, quickly, and credibly. This is exactly what a system of digital public infrastructure (DPI) for verifiable credentials does.
Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) in the Caribbean has recently launched its VerifyTT, which they have developed using the opensource Inji stack in collaboration with the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI), located at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB) in India. COL, together with the National Training Agency of T&T, recently organised a short study trip of eight senior officials from three member countries — Barbados, Namibia, and St Kitts and Nevis — to T&T to understand the development process and functioning of VerifyTT.
“Education is an investment, and credentials are the proof of that journey. For students it means opportunity. For institutions, trust. For employers, confidence.”
This is how the team from IGoVTT, the public sector undertaking that has developed VerifyTT, described the critical process of verifying credentials. VerifyTT makes trusted institutional records instantly and cryptographically verifiable, so a qualification can be confirmed in seconds, anywhere, while paper and PDF certificates are slow to check, easy to forge, and hard to recognise across borders. The gains are real: quick hiring; removal or at least much reduced chances of fraud; and qualifications that travel across space.
A verifiable credential is a trusted, digitally verifiable representation of raw data from physical credentials, which enables easy exchange while preserving authenticity and integrity.
“DPI is like a highway that expedites the pace of the verification instantly”, commented Ms Ria Kareem, Chairman of IGovTT.
The Inji stack provides a modular credentialing stack for three roles: holder, issuer, and verifier. The study visit included interactions with the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), which has been one of the trusted partners of VerifyTT since its pilot stage, and has the role of both issuer and verifier in this model.
NESC Technical Institute (NESC-TI), the premier TVET institution in T&T, also presented to the study team its plan to adopt VerifyTT for deepening their micro-credentials journey. They expect that quick and credible digital verification would enable faster skills recognition, and enable easy education and career progression, especially in cases of upskilling and reskilling.
The members of the visiting study team found the experience immensely relevant and useful for their own contexts. “The materials provide valuable insights into the potential application of verifiable credentials and digital public infrastructure solutions. They will be carefully reviewed as we continue to explore opportunities for strengthening digital transformation initiatives that can support education, skills recognition, and broader public service delivery within our respective jurisdictions,” commented Dr Rodderick Rudder, Director, Tertiary Education, Ministry of Technological and Vocational Training, Barbados, who led the visiting team from his country.
The opensource platform used for VerifyTT has the potential for diverse applications. It can be adapted to verify other kinds of documents, such as bank balances, employment history, and health records, if those are also part of the digital ecosystem. This is what makes the DPI a real highway that can be used for different kinds of vehicles at the same time.
This story was originally published in the August 2026 issue of Connections. Read the full magazine: https://doi.org/10.56059/11599/6148
