DigiLocker as National Academic Depository (NAD)

HRD Ministry has designated DigiLocker as National Academic Depository (NAD)

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II-Governance

DigiLocker, an online document wallet has been designated as the sole National Academic Depository (NAD) by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) to enable educational institutions to store digital copies of academic awards, mark sheets and certificates on the cloud-based service.

• University Grants Commission (UGC) will implement NAD as a permanent scheme within Digilocker. UGC will have to ensure that reports on various parameters such as registrations, academic award uploads, and verification completed are provided to MHRD.

Features of NAD

NAD will:

• Operate in fully online mode
• Allow lodging of Academic awards in a digital format, maintaining the integrity of access to the database and of the awards lodged in the database.
• Allow students to retrieve their lodged academic awards at any time.
• Allow employers and other person with prior approval of the concerned student to verify the authenticity of any academic award.
• Maintain the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of the database.

Stakeholders in NAD

1. Students and other academic award holders
2. Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility assessment bodies
3. Verifying Entities i.e. banks, employer companies (domestic & overseas), Government entities, academic institutions/boards/eligibility assessment bodies (domestic and overseas) etc.
4. Ministry of Human Resource Development/ University Grants Commission
5. Depositories i.e. NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL)

Services being offered by the NAD

The NAD shall:

• Register Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility Assessment bodies
• Register students based on Aadhaar / Unique NAD ID;
• Register verification users;
• Allow Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility Assessment bodies to upload the academic awards issued by them.
• Allow Academic Institutions/Boards/Eligibility Assessment bodies to map/link the academic award to the NAD Accounts of Students concerned.
• Allow students to view the academic awards linked to their respective account.
• Allow students to download/print an authenticated copy of the academic award.
• Allow verifying entities to verify the authenticity of the academic award (subject to prior student consent)

Benefits of NAD

For academic institutions

• Permanent and safe record of keeping all academic awards issued;
• No need for issuing duplicate academic awards, students can get it from NAD;
• Effective deterrence to fake and forged paper certificates;
• All academic awards verification needs can be addressed by NAD;
• Efficient, effective and transparent administration.

For students

• Immediate availability of academic awards upon upload by Academic Institution
• Online, permanent record of academic awards
• No risk of losing, spoiling, damaging the academic awards
• Anytime, anywhere and convenient access to academic awards

For verification Users (Employer Companies, Banks etc.)

• Online, quick and reliable verification of academic awards (with prior consent of the student concerned)
• Access to authenticated copy of academic awards
• No risk of fake and forged Certificates.
• Reduction in cost, time and efforts for verification

About Digilocker: It is an Aadhaar-based cloud-based locker in which users can store electronic versions of important documents like birth certificates, voters ID cards, University documents, PAN cards, and more. It was launched by the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) in 2015.
Background: Before this, NDML (NSDL Database Management Limited) and CVL (CDSL Ventures Limited) acted as the NAD, for a period of 3 years. The agreement between UGC, NDML and CVL ended in November 2019.

Jai Hind Jai Bharat