CSC and Digivisio support interoperability in higher education

CSC has a long history and broad expertise in developing and maintaining digital services that support the digitalization of higher education in Finland, and facilitating collaboration between higher education institutions. As part of CSC, the Digivisio 2030 program office plays an active role in supporting higher education’s digital transformation. A key success factor in this work is interoperability: enabling collaboration of higher education institutions, and ensuring smooth data flows, seamless services for learners, and efficient administrative processes.

Digivisio 2030 is a joint initiative of Finnish higher education institutions with the goal of enabling flexible learning across the country. CSC acts as the program office, responsible for development work, collaboration coordination, decision-making preparation, and other operational tasks. The program office works closely with CSC’s other services for higher education.

Digivisio is building a shared digital service platform, guidance services based on individual learning paths, and supporting operational change in higher education institutions. The first service, Opin.fi, is already launched. The program office’s work is guided by a steering group of representatives from higher education institutions. The operations are managed by HigherEd Hub Finland Ltd, a company owned by the higher education institutions.

CSC has played a key role in advancing the digitalization of higher education already before the Digivisio program. Over the years, CSC has led cooperation around higher education data flows and developed services such as the VIRTA higher education achievement register, the Arvo feedback system, and the Vipunen statistics portal. We’ve also provided shared services commissioned by higher education institutions, including OILI for course registration, RIPA for cross-institutional studies, the EXAM digital exam system, and the Haka Identity Federation. Most of these services have been in use for years, giving CSC deep insight into higher education’s data structures, processes, and system interoperability.

CSC’s expertise from this globally unique service portfolio has also supported the development work within Digivisio. This is only natural as CSC’s digitalization services and the solutions developed within Digivisio are part of the same service ecosystem for higher education. At the moment, we work together on projects such as the renewal of the VIRTA service, the development of the OPI reference architecture, and aligning international data flows.

Interoperability creates impact

Interoperability means, for example, that information is understandable, comparable, and easily transferrable between different systems and services – technically, semantically, functionally, and legally. It’s what enables a student to register for a course at another institution or to transfer study records between systems without manual steps.

When developing new shared services or systems, aligning processes and data structures across higher education institutions and other stakeholders can take years. If shared requirements, data contents, and processes are uniform and clearly defined, the technical implementation can be relatively straightforward.

Although higher education institutions have collaborated and been supported by CSC for a long time already, processes are still complex and vary across institutions. There are differences in how data is recorded, in service management maturity, and in the levels of expertise available. That’s why national collaboration must ensure that everyone, regardless of capability level, can keep up with the development work.

Interoperability enables international collaboration

Interoperability is not just important nationally – it’s essential for international cooperation as well. Finnish higher education institutions are involved in many European university alliances working to create a more unified and competitive European Education Area.

The same interoperability challenges we’re solving in Finland are also being addressed across Europe. Students need to be able to explore relevant study offerings across Europe, use services from different institutions, and integrate courses completed in other insitutions into their degrees.

This all requires smooth data exchange between countries. Finland and the other Nordic countries are in a strong position as forerunners in interoperability. CSC is one of the founding members of the new NRENs4Education network, which supports interoperability and collaboration between European education organizations.

This article was first published on 26 June by CSC.