December 7, 2020
Announcing the launch of the ARUCC MyCreds, a new virtual wallet and digital peer-to-peer document and credential exchange hub
The DCC Inc. team is proud to have been significant contributors to the new ARUCC MyCreds, a Canadian first for supporting national mobility with trusted academic and credential document exchange and learner focused virtual wallets. The new MyCreds launched in fall 2020.
The DCC Inc. team stewarded the entire project, providing oversight and support to the many people involved in the project. Joanne Duklas serves as the executive lead for the project and coordinated all activities across all service providers, the higher education community, and other stakeholders. Paolo Errore and Nathalie Girardin, both of whom work with DCC Inc., and two former team members, Alice Pelkman and Anna Foshay, provided their expertise and supports across the spectrum of needs. As an illustration, Nathalie Girardin played a linchpin role to ensure the French language translations for the entire MyCreds environment were at the quality level appropriate for a Canadian environment for learners. Each of these individuals brought to the project extensive experience in higher education and worked with Joanne and the community to help make this project successful.
Prior to this, the DCC Inc. team oversaw the logistics for the planning, development, launch, review and resolution of the international RFP for choosing a technology service provider for MyCreds. Joanne specifically was responsible for coordinating the engagement and contributions of many key participants including experts in finance, legal, purchasing, system architecture and design, information security, privacy, registrarial, data architecture, policy and more. Upwards of 40 experts from across Canada were involved in this RFP process, an effort that was finalized in June 2020 with the announcement of Digitary.
Once the service provider was chosen, the DCC Inc. team led the coordination of and support for the creation, testing, and launch of the MyCreds, working in partnership with the higher education community. The DCC Inc. team provided this support as a service provider firm hired by the Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada. Under the executive leadership provided by Joanne Duklas and with the tremendous expertise of the teams at Digitary, DCC Inc. and ARUCC, the building of MyCreds took 4.5 months, an extraordinary feat for a technology project that is national in scale and fully bilingual.
Alongside of this, Joanne led the creation of the new bilingual website, mycreds.ca and mescertif.ca, with the support of a Vancouver-based web design firm, SplitMango Media Inc. This new website supports new, current and graduating students, member institutions and many stakeholders across Canada. The DCC Inc. team wrote the content, stewarded the ARUCC Communications working group comprised of leaders from across Canada to capture community engagement, oversaw the work of the design firm, translated the site, and coordinated technical integration needs with the MyCreds digital wallet with ARUCC’s technology partner, Digitary.
The DCC Inc. team is proud of its contributions with bringing one of the most unique national level student service offerings to Canada. It represents a hallmark example of the capacities the team brings to its clients.
by Maya Hardy