Originally published September 22, 2023. Updated to reflect the continued evolution of credential wallets, Universal Talent Passports, and the Learning and Employment Record ecosystem.

Schools, training providers, licensing bodies, employers, professional associations, and workforce organizations are issuing more digital credentials than ever.

This is meaningful progress.

Portable and verifiable records can help people carry trusted evidence of learning and achievement beyond the organization that issued it. They can reduce repeated verification, make accomplishments easier to share, and contribute to a more connected Learning and Employment Record ecosystem.

But issuing a credential is only the beginning.

A credential creates limited value if the recipient:

• Does not know where it went
• Cannot access it after leaving the institution
• Does not understand what it represents
• Cannot move it into another application
• Does not know when or where to use it
• Cannot connect it with other experiences
• Encounters employers that do not recognize the format
• Loses access when an email address or platform changes

Credential issuers should therefore think beyond issuance.

They should help people receive, understand, retain, and use what they have earned.

Wallet and passport partners can help—but only when those relationships preserve individual choice, interoperability, privacy, and long-term access.

A Credential Is a Trusted Claim, Not a Complete Experience

A credential can make an important claim.

It may confirm that someone:

• Completed a program
• Passed an assessment
• Met a licensing requirement
• Demonstrated defined competencies
• Participated in an experience
• Earned recognition from an organization

The credential’s value depends on the clarity of that claim.

Recipients and relying organizations should be able to understand:

• Who issued it
• What was required
• What was assessed
• Which competencies or outcomes are associated with it
• When it was earned
• Whether it expires
• Whether its status can be verified
• What evidence or criteria support it

Even a well-designed credential does not explain everything about the person who earned it.

It may not show how they later applied the learning, how it connects with other experiences, or why it matters for a particular opportunity.

That is where wallets, passports, profiles, and other person-facing applications become important.

Wallets and Passports Serve Different—but Overlapping—Needs

A credential wallet can help someone receive, store, manage, and present digital credentials.

A passport can provide a broader experience that connects credentials with other information, such as:

• Roles and activities
• Projects and work samples
• Skills and knowledge
• Evidence and outcomes
• Endorsements
• Goals and interests
• Reflections and personal context
• Purpose-specific profiles

These categories are not absolute. Some wallets provide rich career features, while some passport applications include wallet functionality.

The important question is not what the application calls itself.

It is whether the application helps the recipient turn a credential into lasting, portable value.

Why Issuers Should Support Person-Facing Applications

Credential issuers have a direct interest in what happens after issuance.

If recipients can use a credential successfully, the credential becomes more valuable and the issuer’s impact becomes more visible.

Active wallet and passport support can help issuers:

Improve credential activation

Recipients are more likely to accept and retain a credential when onboarding is clear and connected with an immediate purpose.

Extend value beyond graduation or program completion

Portable records allow people to continue using what they earned after their institutional relationship ends.

Strengthen career and learning outcomes

A credential can become part of an application, portfolio, advancement conversation, learning pathway, or professional identity.

Learn how credentials are used

With appropriate consent and privacy protections, issuers can receive feedback about whether credentials are understood, recognized, and connected with real opportunities.

Improve program design

Patterns in credential use may reveal where descriptions are unclear, competencies need refinement, or additional evidence would make an achievement more useful.

Support lifelong relationships

Schools, professional organizations, and workforce programs can continue helping people learn and grow rather than ending the relationship when the credential is issued.

Recommend Starting Points Without Restricting Choice

The wallet and passport landscape can be difficult to navigate.

Recipients may not know:

• Which applications can receive their credential
• Which applications are trustworthy
• Whether an application will remain available
• How the provider uses personal data
• Whether credentials can be exported
• Which tools employers or other organizations accept

Issuers can help by testing applications and recommending one or more practical starting points.

But a preferred-partner strategy should not become a closed ecosystem.

Recipients should remain free to:

• Use another compatible application
• Export their credentials
• Maintain records in more than one place
• Change providers
• Use credentials without purchasing unrelated services
• Decline optional data-sharing arrangements

The issuer should recommend—not control—the person’s lifelong digital identity.

What Issuers Should Evaluate in a Wallet or Passport Partner

A partner should be evaluated through documented criteria rather than product excitement alone.

Standards support

Can the application accurately receive and present the issuer’s credential format? Does it preserve verification information, identifiers, and relevant metadata?

Portability

Can people export or transfer their records? What happens if the provider shuts down or the institutional partnership ends?

Privacy and data use

Does the provider clearly explain what data it collects, why it collects it, and whether it uses the information for advertising, model training, analytics, or other secondary purposes?

Individual agency

Can people decide what to share? Can they create purpose-specific views without exposing their complete record?

Security

How does the provider protect accounts and credentials? How are access, recovery, revocation, and incident response handled?

Accessibility

Does the product support people with different disabilities, languages, devices, levels of digital access, and technical confidence?

User experience

Can an ordinary recipient receive and use a credential without understanding the technical infrastructure underneath it?

Evidence and context

Can the credential be connected with projects, activities, work samples, or other information that helps explain its meaning?

Organizational utility

Can employers, schools, and other relying organizations understand what they receive without adopting an entirely separate technical environment?

Sustainability

Does the provider have a credible approach to long-term service, data continuity, support, and product development?

Commercial transparency

Does the issuer receive compensation or another benefit from recommending the provider? Are costs to recipients clear? Could the partnership improperly steer people toward paid services?

AI governance

If AI interprets personal information, can the individual review and correct the result? Is it clear what is inferred rather than verified?

No partner will be perfect across every dimension.

The issuer should document tradeoffs, test real workflows, and explain why an option is being recommended.

Avoid Recreating Institutional Lock-In

Some institutions may build their own wallet, profile, or alumni platform.

An institution-specific experience can make onboarding easier and strengthen continuity with learners or members.

It should not become the only place where a person can use their credential.

If a learner loses access after graduation, cannot export the record, or must remain inside the institution’s platform, the credential is not meaningfully portable.

Issuers should design for departure from the beginning.

People should be able to leave the institution without leaving the value of their learning behind.

This means supporting:

• Durable personal access
• Third-party applications
• Open and documented formats
• Credential-status verification
• Account and email changes
• Data export
• Clear transition plans if a platform is retired

An alumni portal can be valuable.

It should not become a gate around the person’s own achievement.

Support Adoption at the Moment of Relevance

Sending a credential link after a program ends is rarely enough.

Issuers should integrate credential use into experiences where its value is visible.

During orientation

Explain what digital credentials are, where they can be stored, and how recipients will use them.

During the learning experience

Show how activities, assessments, and evidence connect with the credential’s claims.

During capstones or final projects

Help learners preserve work samples and connect evidence with the credential.

At issuance

Provide guided support for receiving, reviewing, and retaining the record.

Through career services

Help people use credentials within applications, portfolios, interviews, and networking profiles.

Through advising

Connect credentials with continued learning and possible pathways.

Through alumni or member engagement

Allow people to return for updated records, new learning, recognition, and continued professional growth.

The credential should become part of the learning journey—not an attachment sent after the meaningful experience has ended.

Help Recipients Understand Trust

A person-facing application may contain many types of information:

• Verified credentials
• Self-described experiences
• Uploaded artifacts
• Third-party endorsements
• Assessment results
• AI-generated skill suggestions

Recipients should understand the difference.

Issuers can help by explaining exactly what their credential verifies and what it does not.

For example, an issuer might verify that a person completed a program and demonstrated defined learning outcomes. It may not verify every capability the person later connects with that experience.

Clear boundaries protect the issuer, the recipient, and the relying organization.

A trusted ecosystem does not require every claim to be institutionally verified.

It requires each claim’s source and status to remain understandable.

Make Credentials Useful to Employers and Other Organizations

People will struggle to use credentials if relying organizations cannot interpret them.

Issuers should engage employers, schools, licensing bodies, and other organizations that may receive their records.

That engagement can help clarify:

• Which credential information matters
• How competencies should be described
• What evidence strengthens the claim
• Which workflows can accept the credential
• Where existing systems create friction
• What additional context a recipient may need to provide

Wallet and passport partnerships can support this work by presenting credentials within purpose-specific profiles or Passport Pages.

The goal is not simply to display a badge.

It is to help the receiving organization understand what the credential represents and how it relates to a real decision.

Work With Emerging Providers Responsibly

Startups and emerging projects often explore new approaches to:

• Conversational reflection
• Evidence capture
• Talent visualization
• Skills translation
• Person-controlled sharing
• AI guidance
• Connection with organizational workflows

Credential issuers can play an important role by providing real use cases, technical feedback, and access to voluntary pilot participants.

But innovation does not remove the issuer’s responsibility to conduct due diligence.

A pilot should define:

• The problem being tested
• Which participants are involved
• What information will be exchanged
• How consent will work
• What the provider may retain
• What happens when the pilot ends
• How records can be recovered
• Which outcomes will be measured
• How participants can report problems
• What would justify continued adoption

“Early-stage” should describe the provider’s maturity—not lower the standard of care applied to people’s information.

A Practical Partnership Model

Credential issuers can begin without making an exclusive, institution-wide commitment.

1. Define the recipient problem

Identify the specific point of friction: credential acceptance, career use, alumni access, portfolio development, or continued learning.

2. Test interoperability

Issue sample credentials and verify that potential partners preserve their meaning, source, status, and presentation.

3. Evaluate real user experience

Include learners, workers, alumni, advisors, accessibility specialists, and relying organizations.

4. Select multiple compatible options where practical

Provide a tested starting point while preserving choice.

5. Integrate support into an existing workflow

Use a capstone, career-service program, licensing process, workforce initiative, or alumni experience.

6. Measure meaningful use

Track whether recipients accept, understand, retain, reuse, and benefit from their credentials—not merely how many were issued.

7. Maintain an exit plan

Ensure recipients can retain their records if the partner changes, the contract ends, or the product is discontinued.

Where TalentPass Fits

TalentPass is Gobekli’s person-facing Human Intelligence Layer.

It helps people connect credentials with experiences, activities, evidence, capabilities, goals, and reflection.

Pythia helps individuals build profiles and understand how different parts of their histories may be useful. Passport Pages allow selected information to be organized and shared for particular opportunities and relationships.

TalentSync supports organizational workflows for employers, schools, membership organizations, and public institutions.

Together, TalentPass and TalentSync are designed to help credentials participate in a larger value exchange:

• Issuers contribute trusted records.
• Individuals add context and decide what to share.
• Organizations receive information connected with a defined purpose.
• Continued experience and feedback can strengthen the person’s record over time.

TalentPass should be evaluated by credential issuers using the same standards of interoperability, privacy, accessibility, utility, and sustainability that they apply to any other potential partner.

Issuance Is a Continuing Responsibility

A credential is not successful merely because it was issued.

It is successful when the person can access it, understand it, trust it, carry it forward, and use it to support meaningful goals.

Credential issuers cannot control every application or every way a record will be interpreted.

They can take responsibility for creating clear credentials, supporting open exchange, recommending trustworthy tools, teaching recipients how to use their records, and preserving choice.

Preferred wallet and passport partnerships can provide valuable starting points.

They should never become new forms of institutional lock-in.

The long-term objective is an open ecosystem in which people can choose the applications that serve them, move their records without losing meaning, and continue benefiting from what they have earned throughout their lives.

That is how credential issuance becomes lasting empowerment.

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Product availability notice: This article discusses Gobekli’s broader vision for credential partnerships, TalentPass, and the Human Intelligence Layer. Credential receipt, Passport Pages, organizational integrations, and other capabilities may be at different stages of implementation or available through Launch Partnerships. Visit the Product Availability page for current product status.