My journey with Sunbird began in 2017 when we at the EkStep Foundation joined forces with the Ministry of Education (formerly MHRD) on the National Teacher Portal initiative. This initiative soon evolved into DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing), a national platform dedicated to enhancing school education in India.
The Vision Behind Sunbird
Sunbird was conceived as a collection of modular, configurable, and extendable building blocks designed to “share the ability to solve.” Think of it as a set of LEGO blocks or puzzle pieces that can be assembled in myriad combinations to foster innovative solutions within the educational ecosystem.
From the outset, we identified several essential building blocks that would form the backbone of any large-scale transformation. Among these were telemetry, knowledge graphs, data platforms, and crucially, registries and credentials. Our initial work on registries and credentials began as OpenSABER (Open Software Architecture for Building Electronic Registries), utilizing openbadges as a foundational element.
At the heart of it, the idea has been and remains, to enable attested sources of information with ownership for individual’s data in their control and credentialing (or badging) to make this data easily shareable and verifiable.
Registries form the seed of trust in any decentralized ecosystem and credentials empower an individual with control over their data, making it portable, verifiable, inclusive, trustworthy and accessible.
Empowering Individuals Through Data Ownership
At its core, Sunbird RC enables an attested source of information while granting individuals ownership and control over their data. This credentialing process—referred to as badging in the initial days—ensures that personal data is easily shareable and verifiable.
Registries serve as the seeds of trust in any decentralized ecosystem, while credentials empower individuals by giving them control over their data. This makes their information portable, verifiable, inclusive, trustworthy, and accessible to all.
Through the pandemic, as the eGov Foundation developed DIVOC for COVID vaccination management & certification, the global efforts rapidly evolved standards around ‘verifiable credentials’. OpenSABER was re-branded as Sunbird RC (Registry and Credential).
Adapting to Change: The Impact of the Pandemic and Birth of Sunbird RC
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the development of digital solutions, prompting the eGov Foundation to create DIVOC for managing vaccination records and certifications. During this period, global standards around ‘verifiable credentials’ rapidly evolved. As a result, OpenSABER was rebranded as Sunbird RC (Registry and Credential) to give a fresh boost of enthusiasm
Sunbird RC has emerged as a vital building block for establishing trusted registries and verifiable credentials across various domains. It powers other Digital Public Goods (DPGs) such as DIGIT, Inji, Sunbird Serve, and Sunbird ED. To date, it has facilitated billions of credentials and diverse registries across sectors like healthcare and education in India.
Sunbird RC offers microservices for credential issuance and management, enabling rapid deployment of electronic registries through configurable schemas. One standout feature is its ability to generate instantly verifiable credentials that can be accessed offline via printable QR codes.
Looking Ahead: Collaboration and Innovation
With the growing traction for credentialing systems globally across various use cases, Dhiway has joined Sunbird RC as a co-maintainer alongside the Centre for Open Societal Systems (COSS). Together, we aim to advance this project further by promoting adoption and enhancing innovations in digital identity, data registries, digital wallets, and credentialing systems.
Sunbird is an open-source collective seeded by the EkStep Foundation. The community has developed about 20 digital solutions—referred to as “building blocks”—that can be utilized individually or combined to create larger and more complex solutions.
I have had the pleasure of working with multiple community members from eGov Foundation, MOSIP, BMGF, some of the hyperscale cloud service providers such as AWS & Google, a few large scale multinational IT companies, a bunch of start-ups, government ministries, and many open-source communities.
I am thrilled to continue my tryst with Sunbird RC and grow it together with the community, leveraging Dhiway team’s extensive experience in building and maintaining open-source projects.
To learn more about Sunbird RC and join our vibrant community, visit https://rc.sunbird.org
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