SCB unit fills gap in transcript services
DIGITAL Ventures Co, a subsidiary of Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), and partners have launched Thailand’s first centralised blockchain platform to verify academic transcripts online.
They also hope to further develop the core technology to create something akin to LinkedIn as a professional network platform for Thailand.
Digital Ventures chief executive officer Orapong Thien-Ngern yesterday joined representatives of eight leading universities, executives of top companies and senior officials from the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society in launching the collaborative effort on academic document verification. The services are expected to start in January.
Ministry of Digital Economy and Society permanent secretary Ajarin Pattanapanchai said that the so-called B.VER (Blockchain Solution for Academic Document Verification) is expected to create transparency and reduce the incidence of fraud regarding the issuing of transcripts.
Orapong said the B.VER would lead to cost reductions for every party – the universities, students and employers. Currently, employers find it costly and time consuming to verify educational qualifications submitted by students seeking jobs. Students also often have to go back to their universities to get new copies of their transcripts issued to replace lost documents for job applications.
Orapong cited the experience of King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi having to process about 37,000 requests for transcripts each year and Mahidol University, which processes some 5,000 requests a year.
Orapong is upbeat that the collaboration will lead to something bigger. “We want to deepen and widen blockchain technology application and it is a new thing we need to learn more about,” he said, referring to a recently introduced blockchain-based application for the Siam Cement Group (SCG) to help manage its supply chain.. The app was jointly launched by SCG and Digital Ventures.
In the near future, the platform – which draws on Big Data and artificial intelligence - will be extended as a channel for recommending suitable job positions, benefiting both applicants and recruiters.
LinkedIn has 500 million professionals as members and has annual revenue of US$5 billion, said Orapong. “We could create a professional network platform for Thailand, close in scope to LinkedIn, a global professional platform,” he said.
Orapong said that, regarding the privacy and security of information in the transcripts, when the transcripts are registered in the blockchain, Digital Ventures would get only a fingerprint format of the documents – with no information visible, said.
“Or, in other words, we could only tell whether that document is genuine or forged, and in this way we ensure the privacy and security of the owner of the document,” he said.
Digital Ventures’ head of project delivery, Chirapol Mathawaphan, said that Digital Ventures had chosen the Ethereum platform, a public blockchain with features capable of permanent data protection in the format of a decentralised ledger of information. Users can access data for verification purposes but cannot edit any information.
At present, Ethereum has created more than 25,000 nodes worldwide, offering higher data security and making it the best fit for platform development, data storage, and verification, Chirapol said.
The B.VER working process is divided into two parts. First, original transcripts are uploaded into the platform by universities. Afterwards, it will encrypt the document and store data on blockchain in a fingerprint format, which is unique for each document. As a result, firms can instantly verify academic documents by uploading the document into the platform.
The platform will then decrypt the documents by comparing the fingerprint format with original documents stored on the blockchain, with results instantly displayed to identify valid or fake documents. Storage and verification of documents using blockchain will ensure data security and accuracy.
In the near future, students and others can directly request or share academic documents to employers via this platform.
The academic institutions involved in the B.VER are Kasetsart University, Khon Kaen University, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Mahidol University, Rangsit University, Srinakharinwirot University, and Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University. The companies involved include Thai Oil PCL, Bangchak Corporation PCL, PTT Exploration and Production PCL (PTTEP), PTT Global Chemical PCL (PTTGC), Golden Land Property Development PCL, and IRPC PCL.
State-run educational institutions may not be able to join in the B.VER in the near future as the government needs to amend many laws and regulations to accommodate it, Ajarin said.
