Blockchain Technology for University Diploma Certiﬁcate

Meyliana

, Yakob Utama Chandra

, Cadelina Cassandra

, Henry Antonius Eka Widjaja

, Surjandy

Erick Fernando

, Jonas Aditya Sunandar

and Harjanto Prabowo

Information Systems Department, School of Infomration Systems, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

School of Computer Science, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

Computer Science Department, BINUS Graduate Program – Doctor of Computer Science, Bina Nusantara University,

Keywords:

Blockchain, University Certiﬁcate Diploma, Simulation Test, Blockchain for Publishing Certiﬁcate, Multi-

Chain

Abstract:

University Diploma certiﬁcation is the valuable document published one time by university for student who

graduated and never generated twice. The worthy of university Diploma Certiﬁcation document brings a lot

of changes for owner; therefore, many people try to falsify the university diploma certiﬁcation. Several falsify

university diploma certiﬁcation founded by ministry of higher education in Indonesia for the last several years,

and recently, this study tries to explore the new Blockchain technology as facilitator to solve the problem and

due to the characteristic of Blockchain that immutable, peer-to-peer, distributed possible to apply. Several

early studies found and reported theoretically, Blockchain technology is possible to solve the falsify university

diploma certiﬁcate issues. Therefore, this business process simulation testing tries to explore the possibility

of using Blockchain Technology for university certiﬁcate, McRhys model used as framework for publishing

the university certiﬁcate diploma and the result of this study may increase the likelihood of implementation of

Blockchain Technology to produce the university certiﬁcation diploma that immutable and reduce the forgery

of university certiﬁcate diploma.

1 INTRODUCTION

University certiﬁcation diploma (UCD) that produce

once by university is a valuable document for the uni-

versity student for his/her future career and might pos-

sible to use for identity as well. The UCD might not

likely to produce twice. Somehow, several people try

to fabricate the UCD. In the last several year higher

ministry of education in Indonesia was found and

some technic to fabricate UCD found (Adiya, 2017)

(Agriesta, 2017) and the similar case was found in

2015 as well (Linggasari, 2015).

Contemporary, the ministry of higher education

in Indonesia is trying to prevent the fabricate UCD

in the future. Blockchain technology founded by

Satoshi Nakamoto (unknow as a group name or a per-

son name) in 2008 (Nakamoto et al., 2008) that have

characteristic immutable, unchangeable, distributed,

peer-to-peer, consensus might be facilitated to solve

the issues.

Early research reported that new Blockchain

technology might be apply in several indus-

try such as enterprise system (Swan, 2015),

Health/medicine(Vruddhula, 2018)(Sylim et al.,

2018) , Governance (Paech, 2017), Supply Chain

Management (Kayikci, 2018) (Fernando et al., 2018)

(Meyliana et al., ) and education as well(Palma

et al., 2019) (Grech and Camilleri, 2017) (Devecchi

et al., 2017) in education sector thermionically

reported Blockchain Technology very possible to

facilitate the issue of falsify university certiﬁcate

diploma. This ongoing experimental study will focus

on the usage of Blockchain for publishing UCD,

the private and permissioned Blockchain called

Multichain(Greenspan, 2015) used in this simulation

test study, McRhys as a framework used in this study,

especially part of publish process of university cer-

tiﬁcate diploma (Meyliana et al., ), this is research is

a continuation of previous research who successfully

create the McRhys framework, in this research will

try to simulation of implement to one of Blockchain

system and applications which is Multichain, the

system and applications will use “asis” condition no

modiﬁcation has been made. The research tries to

Meyliana, ., Chandra, Y., Cassandra, C., Widjaja, H., Surjandy, ., Fernando, E., Sunandar, J. and Prabowo, H.

Blockchain Technology for University Diploma Certiﬁcate.

DOI: 10.5220/0009907801930198

In Proceedings of the International Conferences on Information System and Technology (CONRIST 2019), pages 193-198

ISBN: 978-989-758-453-4

193

explore the possibility of using “asis” Blockchain for

university certiﬁcate diploma.

Focus group discussion have been made with sev-

eral parties that capable in UCD production such

as Rectorate unit manager, academic supporting unit

manager, student registration and scheduling unit

manager, academic operation manager, Student Ad-

visory Unit manager. Thus, the study will show the

result of using Blockchain technology to enhance the

existing system to produce UCD become robust.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND

METHODOLOGY

In this section will explain about Blockchain, Pri-

vate and Permissioned Blockchain, Research Design,

Business Process Simulation Testing, and Distributed

monitoring and one-time process publish diploma cer-

tiﬁcate method.

2.1 Blockchain

Blockchain is a new technology found in 2008

by a person or a group that commonly known as

Satoshi Nakamoto and since 2014 Blockchain with

the smart contract feature makes Blockchain possi-

ble to implement or use for enterprise system (Swan,

2015), such as for Supply Chain Management logis-

tic(Sadouskaya, 2017) (Marr, 2018) (Meyliana et al.,

) , health industry (Kumar and Tripathi, 2019) (Tseng

et al., 2018) and Education sector (Palma et al., 2019)

(Turkanovi

c et al., 2018).

2.2 Private and Permissioned

Blockchain

Many types of Blockchain contemporary, permis-

sion less Blockchain it means no permission rules on

the Blockchain system, for example, is Bitcoin apps

where everyone can see the transaction, and everyone

can write or perform the operation. The other types of

Blockchain is permission Blockchain, where there is

permission or rule that can be set on the Blockchain.

For example, MultiChain (Greenspan, 2015) it means

everyone can write or make the transaction, but only

particular person that have permission.

2.3 Research Design

The stage of research in this study start with focus

group discussion to discuss about procedure to pro-

duce UCD, the detail can be seen at ﬁgure 1.

space

Figure 1: Research Design & Simulation Step

2.4 Business Process Simulation Testing

Business Process Simulation Testing (BPST) is a

part of Business Process Reengineering. BPST is a

method used in this research. BPST is one of the

green testing methodologies that use minimum re-

sources; the result of the test considers reliable and

similar to real. Steps for BPST start with an expla-

nation of the system used, business model, and sce-

nario of testing, testing result and validation (Rosen-

thal et al., 2018).

2.5 Distributed Monitoring and

Onetime Process Publish Diploma

Certiﬁcate Method

This study used Blockchain Technology to issue uni-

versity certiﬁcate. However, to minimize the forgery

of diploma certiﬁcate, this study used the Distributed

Monitoring method and one time publish certiﬁcate

diploma.

Blockchain with distributed ledger system will

share the absent student activity, student course score,

thesis ﬁnal exam result to all related parties (student

center, judicium unit, academic service) to be moni-

tored before the diploma certiﬁcate publish, if the stu-

dent meet all conditions and agreed by all parties then

the student data and information will be transferred

to judicium unit and the diploma certiﬁcate will only

publish 1 time in life from judicium unit to univer-

sity student. The process exhibit in Figure 2, where

all parties link in Blockchain and its model is part of

McRhys Framework (Meyliana et al., ). By using the

method, the falsify of diploma university can be min-

imized and not controlled by a single department that

may cause the fraudulence.

Figure 2 shows the McRhys business process to

produce university certiﬁcate diploma, from student

activities such as course registration, student lecturing

activities and so on will be recorded in Blockchain,

the other activities that will be recorded in Blockchain

such as Lecturer activities such as lecturing, giving

CONRIST 2019 - International Conferences on Information System and Technology

194

score of exam, and all the activities will be validated

by respective department, for example, scoring exam

from lecturer to student will be veriﬁed by academic

operation, study activity will be conﬁrmed by aca-

demic service, thesis defense will be approved by

Faculty ofﬁce, Academic service. However, after stu-

dent can fulﬁl all requirement than the graduation will

be prepared, faculty ofﬁce together with rectorate of-

ﬁce, student advisory center, and student activity unit

will arrange the necessary document required until

university certiﬁcate diploma publish.

Figure 2: Blockchain Process to Publish Certiﬁcate

3 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The environment of Blockchain laboratory will be

described in this part from operating system usage,

database, Blockchain setup environment. The proce-

dure of this experiment is exploring the possibility of

the design to ﬁll the UCD information to Blockchain

Database or ﬁeld. In this stage, there is no com-

munication or networking aspect has been discussed;

web applications or mobile application will not be ad-

dressed or reported.

3.1 System Information of Operating

Systems

An operating system is one of the essential parts. The

Blockchain lab uses Ubuntu as an operating system

and can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Operating System

3.2 System Information of Database

Beside operating system, another important aspect is

a database, in this case, the Blockchain Lab using or-

dinally database, which is an SQLite database.

3.3 Application Structure of a Node

Figure 4: Blockchain Node

The hierarchy of MultiChain is a node as a one

Private Blockchain and is a node; there are many ad-

dresses can be created, and each address might pos-

sible to have an asset. In this Blockchain Lab, only

single node applied in the server or single node. The

picture captured from MultiChain dashboard menu,

see in Figure 4.

Many addresses are possible to create in a node

and address commonly known as pseudo-name that

created by using hashing 256 technique, and in a sin-

gle node, it possible to create many addresses.

In Figure 5 can be seen address and MultiChain

allowed the set label to make it easy to identify the

address, besides the Label, it can be seen the permis-

sion set for each address The last is an asset; asset can

be transferred by assigned the ownership to address in

this case address represent the university student see

ﬁgure 6.

Figure 5: Blockchain Addressees in Node

Blockchain Technology for University Diploma Certiﬁcate

195

space

Figure 6: Blockchain Asset

3.4 Implementing Blockchain

Figure 7: University Certiﬁcate Diploma

In this part will show how Blockchain can be ap-

plied to produce UCD. From ﬁgure 6 is an example of

UCD and there are eight essential ﬁelds found,

• Point 1 is paper number, is a unique number that

represents sequence paper number.

• Point 2 is alumni number, is a unique number that

represents of alumni number after graduated from

the university.

• Point 3 is the student name, is a student name who

graduated from the university.

• Point 4 is student number, is a unique number that

represents of student number, used while studying

in the university.

• Point 5 is a student date of birth, is a dateof-birth

of the student.

• Point 6 is authorized signature, is a name of the

authorized person that will give a signature on the

university certiﬁcate diploma, for example, is a

dean.

• Point 7 is rector signature, is an authorized person

that will sign the university certiﬁcate diploma.

• Point 8 is ministry higher education certiﬁcate

number, is a unique number come from the min-

istry of higher education,

Exhibit in Figure 7, it can be implemented with

Blockchain in asset area, can be seen in Figure 6,

where the ﬁeld of the asset can be inputted with the in-

formation from UCD. By following this technique, all

the information written on the Blockchain will be pro-

tected (hash), unchanged, and immutable. Figure 8

can be seen the asset ﬁeld ﬁlled with the value of UCD

such as paper number, alumni number, student num-

ber, date of birth, authorized signature person name

(dean and rector), and the last is registry number from

the ministry of higher education.

Figure 8: Blockchain UCD

3.5 Discussion

The beneﬁt of the characteristic of Blockchain to pro-

duce UCD

• Immutable, by using blockchain technology the

university certiﬁcate diploma will be existing for-

ever started the date of the certiﬁcate published

• Unchanged, the data on the university certiﬁcate

diploma will never be changed forever, and cannot

be falsiﬁed

• Distributed, the one who has the ability to see the

university certiﬁcate diploma will be able to see

the UCD.

• Secure, by using Blockchain, the information is

protected (hashing), and the Merkle Tree method

applied using multiple hashing technique. There-

fore, all transactions written on Blockchain will

be secured. The value of each ﬁeld, such as paper

number, alumni number, student name (see ﬁgure

7), will be protected and cannot be changed and

immutable or exist forever. No duplication UCD

can happen.

Implementation of Blockchain in producing UCD

makes the consistency of information, and the relia-

bility of UCD can be ensured, protect the brand image

of the university.

On the other hand, the limitation of the implemen-

tation of Blockchain for UCD has been detected as

well, even though the project is running recently. The

challenge found such as

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• Duplication of data, where the data exist in the

contemporary system and at Blockchain.

• Double posting, the data should post twice to or-

dinary database and Blockchain database.

3.6 Simulation Testing Result

Validation

Validation is one of the critical parts of the simulation

test to ensure the result meets with the requirement.

The validation of testing result has been done by a

university-related party such as vice-rector, rector of-

ﬁce that directly involved in this part.

3.7 Simulation Testing Exclusion or

Challenge

The simulation testing will not cover system scala-

bility; no customization has been made (use “asis”

system). The several challenges found during the

simulation test such as the recent business process

need to adjust, cause the business process might not

be possible to operate as Blockchain system char-

acteristic such as no update or changes of data is

allowed (except creating another transaction), inte-

gration between Blockchain system application and

contemporary system used require plan, for exam-

ple, the primary key and Blockchain address need to

match. However, during the double-entry simulation,

the strategy is applied or manual entry due to time

constraint. Therefore, business process reengineering

will be involved in the university operation in case

Blockchain will be used in the future.

The lack of knowledge about Blockchain Technol-

ogy as one of the challenges found during the simu-

lation test, the many times explanation of Blockchain

Technology had been done during the discussion, the

recent system and application development method

cannot apply directly into the Blockchain system and

application, and database concept, such as distributed

Blockchain characteristic it should be implemented

carefully because of data secrecy referred for uni-

versity certiﬁcate diploma (no duplication of certi-

ﬁcation number, student number, alumni number).

Blockchain system application challenge, the stan-

dard Blockchain system application used in the simu-

lation testing, not the enterprise Blockchain, the lower

security mode used. Therefore, there will be a gap in

the security process transaction (hashing calculation

process) in the future.

4 CONCLUSIONS

This study of Blockchain for UCD is in the right

stage. The next phase will be discussed for uni-

versity student transcripts connecting to Blockchain

with other industry that produces certiﬁcation such as

IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. Besides that, the most

important part is the connection to the Ministry of

Higher Education as the center of certiﬁcation regis-

tration in Indonesia. In this research, McRhys uni-

versity model or framework is applied especially for

university certiﬁcate diploma process. It can be used

and adapted with Blockchain Technology, especially

with Multichain Blockchain system and application.

The simulation test represents the objective of the re-

search yet not comprehensive in some aspects.

The distributed monitoring and one-time diploma

certiﬁcate issuance are focused on Blockchain Tech-

nology. It functionates to minimize the falsiﬁcation

and fraudulence of university diploma certiﬁcate. At

the same level, the department can mitigate the issue.

Because of the inevitable changes of information in

university, diploma certiﬁcate will be recorded in the

Blockchain system and application; Any attempts to

modify the ﬁeld of the database will be protected by

Blockchain mechanism. It implements hashing 256

and Merkle tree method that operated multiple hash-

ing on each level of data in the database.

The scalability and time constrain of Blockchain

Technology system need to be tested due to the vast

publish of certiﬁcate diploma. The scalability might

be changed in the future due to the Blockchain is in

developing phases for an enterprise system to accel-

erate the process. The problem related to a fake cer-

tiﬁcate is possible to solve by Blockchain technology.

The future research is required to improve the scala-

bility of the system, infrastructure design, integration

process between the new system, and Blockchain sys-

tem application at the end.

Future study required to continue this research

by putting some dummy data (for example, 25% to

50% of total in real graduated certiﬁcate diploma) that

should publish in the same date and calculate the pro-

cessing time consume by Blockchain.

Blockchain Technology for University Diploma Certiﬁcate

197

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is supported by the Directorate Gen-

eral of Strengthening for Research and Develop-

ment, Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher

Education, Republic of Indonesia as a part of

Penelitian Terapan Unggulan Perguruan Tinggi Re-

search Grant to Binus University entitled “Implemen-

tasi Blockchain Platform Untuk Menciptakan “Good

Governance” pada Perguruan Tinggi” or “The Im-

plementation of Blockchain Platform to Create“Good

Governance” in Higher Education” with contract

number: 12/AKM/PNT/2019 and contract date: 27

March 2019.

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