At the Global Digital Collaboration Summit 2025, Ayra hosted a session focused on the requirements for enabling a global digital skills-based economy. Ayra’s Executive Director Darrell O’Donnell facilitated the session, along with Etan Bernstein, Head of Ecosystem at the Velocity Network Foundation and an Ayra Member. The session featured panelists from across the employment, education, and technology sectors, with the following objectives:
- Discuss the requirements for a global digital skills based economy and understand where we are on the path towards enabling it.
- Identify where there are disagreements.
- Identify which requirements we agree on.
- Agree on next steps to collaborate to address the differences, remove the barriers and advance the adoption of a viable solution.
To ground the discussion, the organizers shared a draft set of 10 proposed requirements that a global credentialing solution should meet. These requirements were designed to address friction in the labor market, especially for individuals seeking to share their skills, credentials, and work history across borders and employers. Three personas representing real-world challenges in the current labor market were also presented, that of a registered nurse, a cyber-security specialist and an IT specialist.
The draft requirements presented for discussion included:
- Individual at the Center: Individuals must control and own their credentials, consolidate them in the wallet of their choice, and be able to selectively disclose information. Self-asserted credentials must be supported, clearly marked, and technically aligned with verifiable standards.
- Global: Credentials should be claimable and shareable across jurisdictions and support global workforce mobility. The infrastructure should work across industries and languages.
- Encompass all work-related information: The system should support credentialing for all types of skill attainment and assessment—ranging from formal education and training to self-learning and occupational records.
- Assurance, trust & verifiability: The solution must meet high standards of verifiability, including authentication of both individuals and issuers, source authority, data integrity, revocation status, and person-binding.
- Compliance (privacy++): Systems must align with local and global regulations governing privacy, employment, and education.
- Survivability: Credential verification must not require ongoing dependence on a live connection to the issuing organization.
- Open: Solutions should be built on open standards and open-source technology to promote interoperability, transparency, and public good outcomes.
- Presentation/ multiple credentials: Employers should be able to receive and verify a curated set of credentials in a single, digital presentation.
- Issuer revocation and change: Issuers must be able to revoke or update credentials under defined conditions, and individuals must be notified of these changes.
- Notary: The infrastructure should allow for credentials to be issued by accredited notaries using defined verification processes.
Participants generally expressed agreement with several of the proposed requirements, particularly the focus on individual control, assurance and trust, and ensuring credentials can survive beyond the existence of an issuing organization.
The majority of the conversation on the panel to the requirement around “Encompass all work-related information” and the concern that this is too broad. There were multiple comments about finding the balance between a goal to accelerate adoption and the long term goal of accommodating this requirement.
We also discussed the requirement of supporting “Issuer revocation and change” and the concern about limiting this to specific applicable scenarios where it does make sense to allow the issuer to revoke. Also raised was to ensure that the individual has a right to appeal when an issuer revokes a credential.
The panel members and participants raised the need to clearly identify who the different users are for this solution/infrastructure, and make sure that the requirements of each of the user groups is properly addressed.
Next Steps:
Our goal is to take the content that was prepared for this session and that of the panel discussion we held at the conference, and publish a document which summarizes the requirements we agree on and highlights the requirements that need our continued attention and work.
We invite the entire community to collaborate and contribute to this work!
If you would like to contribute, please reach out or send your feedback to etan.bernstein@velocitynetwork.foundation
Session Details:
Day 2 Session: Skills-Based Economy & First Person Credentials
Host: Darrell O’Donnell (Ayra)
Speakers: Etan Bernstein (Ayra Member – Velocity Network Foundation), Wesley Teter (UNESCO), Sharon Leu (JFFLabs), Stéphanie Winet (International Organisation of Employers), Joan Beets (KennedyFitch), Tanya Troshyna (Affinidi)
Co-organizers: Ayra, LF Decentralized Trust
Ayra is a co-organizer of the Global Digital Collaboration event that took place from July 1-2, 2025, in Geneva, Switzerland.