BPI Celebrates Giant Leap Forward for Credential Transparency

MALTA, NY – December 20, 2017 – The Building Performance Institute, Inc. (BPI) is proud to announce that its partner, Credential Engine, publicly launched its tools and services during an event in Washington, D.C. The nonprofit is dedicated to the mission of promoting transparency and credential literacy in the marketplace to reveal the world of credentials and inform the public.

Credential Engine has now officially released a first-of-its-kind centralized credential data platform, the Credential Registry, as well as a common credentialing language to create credential comparability both in the Credential Registry and on the Web, and a free prototype search app —Credential Finder — to search for information.

By releasing these to the public, Credential Engine aims to gather credentialing information from all types of sources — from badges, apprenticeships, certificates and licenses to degrees, micro-masters, and Ph.D.s—to improve credential transparency. This is critical to BPI's work because more individuals, contractors and homeowners alike, can learn about all of the quality certifications that BPI has to offer.

To reach this goal, Credential Engine further announced the debut of an Application Programming Interface (API) tool, which will allow organizations to continuously upload up-to-date information to the Registry at-scale. To contribute to universal understanding of all credentials, announcements were also made touting progress the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL) has made towards adoption by international web standards bodies. Once adopted, this common credentialing language will be the first of its kind to become a standard way to search for credentialing information on the Web.

The Business Roundtable (BRT) further announced their commitment to bringing Credential Engine’s services to the employer community by to encouraging their CEO members to engage with the organization’s work and utilize the Credential Registry to help meet their employment needs. So far, more than 50 businesses are already leading the way.

In the next year, Credential Engine anticipates that it will begin gathering credentialing data at scale, work with vendors to develop new applications for data, and start international outreach efforts to begin mapping the global landscape of credentials. To date, over 1,500 credentials have been submitted to the Credential Registry from more than 170 organizations. Work is already underway towards a goal of capturing 50,000 credentials by the end of 2018 and 100,000 by the close of 2019.

BPI looks forward to staying engaged with these efforts.