The unified register of digital educational documents should be operational by 2024

Rosobrnadzor must ensure the commissioning of the Unified Register of Digital Education Documents by the end of 2024, follows from the government decree. The launch of the resource is planned as part of the experiment on generating electronic diplomas and certificates that began back in 2022 and is now being extended by the White House. It is assumed that such digital documents can be used when entering a university and finding employment. However, when exactly this will become possible is still unknown – as Rosobrnadzor explained to Kommersant, all decisions will be made based on the results of the experiment,

The government adopted a resolution to continue and expand the experiment in issuing diplomas and certificates in digital form. Additional education institutions will be added to the schools, colleges and universities that already participated in the previous stages of the “pilot”. At the same time, the number of participants in the experiment will increase – in 2024 there will be 277 schools, 260 colleges, 61 universities (among them the largest: Moscow State University, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Moscow State Pedagogical University) and 225 institutions of additional education.

The experiment started in 2022 with testing the mechanism for generating digital certificates of basic and secondary general education. It was extended in 2023 and has now de facto reached the final stage. The new round will take place in three stages. The first (from March 15 to May 31) involves the creation of a mechanism for generating digital documents through the launch of their Unified Register (for now it will work in test mode). The second stage partially coincides in time with the first (March 15 – September 30) and involves scaling the new practice and transferring information to the public services portal for posting in users’ personal accounts. Finally, at the third stage (October 1 – December 31), the Unified Register is expected to be put into full operation.

Let us clarify that the documents generated as part of the experiment will not have legal force and graduates will not receive them – after the end of the “pilot”, electronic diplomas and certificates will be deleted from the system. The government explains that the development of the mechanism will ensure the full operation of the super services “Online University Admission” and “Online Digital Education Documents” on the government services portal. According to the authorities, the creation of a second super service will simplify the issuance of education documents, reduce the time and costs of processing paper forms and minimize the risks of falsifying education documents. It was assumed that the super service would start operating in 2025.

As Rosobrnadzor clarified to Kommersant, there has not yet been a decision on whether diplomas and certificates will be issued in paper form in the future. “All decisions will be made at the end of the experiment,” they said. Meanwhile, it is assumed that electronic diplomas and certificates, if desired, can be used for admission to a university or for employment on a par with traditional paper documents.

Please note that information on issued certificates and diplomas is now entered into the Federal Register of Information on Educational Documents and (or) Qualifications and Training Documents, created by Rosobrnadzor in 2013. It includes information about state-issued education documents issued since July 10, 1992.

The explanatory note to the draft resolution noted that the concept of digital educational documents is based on the idea of ​​​​transitioning to the use of a registry model. “The experiment on the creation and implementation of electronic documents on education and qualifications can be considered a logical step towards the digitalization of education. This corresponds to the logic of creating digital portfolios, which the government and the professional community are talking about,” says Semyon Yankevich, head of the Laboratory of Educational Law at the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics. In his opinion, one of the advantages of introducing digital documents is minimizing the risks of issuing documents inappropriately, since all systems verify a university, school or vocational education organization. “This also allows universities to check the background of their students, and employers to check the education of candidates for a position,” says Semyon Yankevich.

“If a company has an electronic personnel document flow, then the opportunity to receive an electronic diploma from a graduate of an educational institution will be a logical step in transferring the entire employment process to digital form,” says Yuri Gorkovenko, HR Director at RT-Invest Transport Systems. Employers, he notes, could connect to the registry and obtain information from it after a potential candidate agrees to access and use of personal data.

The head of Kontur.School, Elena Gerasimova, notes that the innovation gives a further impetus to the development of electronic document management (EDF) technologies, cryptographic encryption, and secure data transfer. “However, the development of electronic document management also imposes certain restrictions and introduces technical requirements for “operators” – those who issue such electronic documents (universities, schools, institutions). All of them will have to switch to modern digital technologies, despite the fact that there are very few specialists capable of supporting the necessary processes in the structure of these organizations,” the expert notes.

Venera Petrova, Anastasia Manuilova