WE BUILD: building credentials together

Within the EU Digital Identity Framework September 2025, the large-scale European pilot WE BUILD was launched. Within the project, SURF is collaborating with the Swedish NREN Sunet, the Greek NREN GRnet, the university partnership GUnet and several private partners on BU5, a business use case. This collaboration focuses on digital publishing and verification of microcredentials and skills.

WE BUILD consists of nearly 200 organisations from 26 countries, including public agencies, private companies, knowledge institutions and technology providers. This consortium is working together to design, implement and test a digital business identity ecosystem, based on the EUDI Wallet framework. Unlike the earlier Large Scale Pilot DC4EU, WE BUILD focuses almost entirely on business-to-business applications of the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet).

Acquired skills in education

Within BU5, we at SURF are working on the design of skills attestation: a proof of acquired skills, very similar to microcredentials. We try to mirror as many technical metadata fields as possible with those of existing microcredentials. Some fields, such as EQF and ECTS, are specific to education and not applicable in a corporate context. For corporate organisations, we investigate whether alternatives are available.

In the Netherlands and in the rest of Europe, it is increasingly important to gain insight into people's skills and competences, in addition to or alongside formal diplomas. Especially in sectors with staff shortages, this helps to make the difference between competent and skilled more visible. Sometimes people are already far along in their development and only a small step is needed to become competent.

Inventory of initiatives

The project is currently at the end of a phase in which existing European initiatives have been inventoried. Based on this, next steps are being developed. We Build build on the microcredentials of the European Commission drawn up in DG EAC. We try to match initiatives from DG Employment with these as closely as possible. An example is the Union of Skills and the Skills Portability Initiative drafted in March 2025. It also dovetails with the development of wallets, putting data in citizens' own hands.

Together with employers, skills and competences are being described. For this, we are looking at using existing taxonomies, such as ESCO (the Skills and Qualifications Ontology of the European Commission). Sector-specific taxonomies and ontologies can also be used.

Credentials to practice

Within BU5, SURF will develop 2 types of credentials over the next 2 years: one for defined skills and one for microcredentials. We hope that there will be more consistency between these credentials so that employers and educational institutions see that the two types are very similar. This will not only make the recognition and use of these performance credentials simpler, but also accelerate them into practice.