Nagpur: Blockchain technology, made popular due to the cryptocurrency mania sweeping the world, is now being put to use for academic records verification by CBSE. Board exam marksheets of both Std X and XII will now be stored using blockchain technology with records being maintained by five separate digital registrars in three cities across the country.
This project, called CBSE Academic BlockChain Documents (ABCD), has been developed in technical collaboration with Centre of Excellence for Block Chain Technology of National Informatics Centre (NIC) under ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY).
Antriksh Johri, CBSE’s director of information and technology, said, “Blockchain technology ensures that academic documents are recorded in a secure and tamper proof manner. These academic documents can be accessed online in a trusted and verifiable manner. It also substantially cuts down the time for verification and results in transparent, tamper proof and paperless usage of certificate.”
Blockchain technology records data in a distributed ledger with ownership of all participating stakeholders. The data is recorded in the chain based on the consensus among the stakeholders and simultaneously replicated at all the locations in the distributed network of blockchain nodes. This eliminates the dependency on a third party for verification.
Johri said, “Data is linked and stored with cryptographic security so that it is immutable and traceable. The linking of the blocks in the blockchain ensures that they cannot be tampered with and the data is trustable as it can be verified across the participating stakeholders.”
Upon issuance of new certificates by CBSE, the digitally signed certificates will be sent to the blockchain-based system creating an additional secure link. This network is established with nodes at Bengaluru, Pune and Jaipur. Presently, the certificate chain is managed by NIC at its data centres.
CBSE started working on this project in September last year and was awaiting the 2021 exam results to launch. “As of now, we have put digital marksheets from 2019-21 and will continue to load previous years’ documents as well,” said Johri.
The central board’s IT team has had their hands full this calendar year, with the biggest project being to develop a portal for schools to upload Std X and XII marks online as physical exams were cancelled due to the pandemic. Johri said, “Within three days, we were able to develop the software and put it online for schools to use.”