The GDN Network aims to build digital capacity across the globe to provide sustainable technology solutions for exchanging digital credentials. 1EdTech's community of educational institutions, edtech suppliers, and government organizations creates technical standards, frameworks, and resources to enable and simplify those exchanges, while also adding value through the metadata provided in the credentials.

"This collaboration underscores 1EdTech's dedication to providing learners and workers with secure, reliable, and portable credentials," said Curtiss Barnes, 1EdTech CEO. "By working alongside other signatories of the GDN Network, we can better understand and leverage interoperability standards, including Open Badges, CLR Standard™, and CASE®, to support worldwide efforts empowering global citizens with verifiable records to share their stories, knowledge, and skills anywhere they want to go."

The GDN Network builds on the Groningen Declaration, which states that citizens worldwide should be able to consult and share their authentic educational data with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they are. Signatories cooperate on a voluntary basis, seeking not primarily standardization but rather convergence.

The main goal of the Groningen Declaration is to develop best practices and globally accepted standards for secure, citizen-centered consultation and portability of digital student data. Becoming a signatory of the GDN Network signals a commitment to the GDN's ethical principles, which endorse citizen-focused, privacy-compliant data-exchange principles that support mobility, and it demonstrates support for ethical sharing of academic documents and data.

As a new signatory of the GDN Network, 1EdTech joins a community of international education and technology leaders who are helping move the needle to shape a future in which credentials are universally recognized and trusted.

"We are delighted to welcome 1EdTech as a new signatory of the GDN Network," said Melanie Gottlieb, President of the GDN Network and Executive Director of AACRAO. "1EdTech's expertise and commitment to open standards will be instrumental in advancing our shared vision of globally accessible and equitable digital credentials. Together, we can continue to foster a digital landscape that prioritizes learner data mobility and interoperability."

"1EdTech has served a longstanding and enduring role in the standards space," said Joanne Duklas, Executive Director of the GDN Network. "We are very supportive of advancing the collaboration among the various standards bodies that enable innovation and interoperability, and we are excited by the prospect of doing our part to catalyze a network-of-networks model in partnership with 1EdTech and others. The opportunities for transformational change are many and achievable through these partnerships to advance rapid access to work and learning for mobile citizens using digital credentials and documents."