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Meeting minutes 

DRAFT

1. Welcome, Freddy Barstad, NTNU
   1. Freddy Barstad from NTNU gave the welcoming words to the meeting attendees. NTNU is on of the largest university in Norway, that has its main focus on technology but also many other subject areas. The annual EUNIS congress is hosted this year by NTNU, with 400 attendees and also many attendees have enrolled to the pre-congress day. Students have been involved to the conference closely. 

2. Opening of Annual Assembly

   1. Appointing the chair of the meeting
      1. Jan Joost Norder was suggested as the chair of meeting by Jukka Kohtanen. Jan Joost Norder was appointed as the chair of the meeting.
      2. Annual assembly was formally opened at 16:10.
   2. Apologies

      1. Croatia members were delayed, because of a delayed flight. 

   3. Confirmation of quorum
      1. Of the full EMREX members and their country representatives Finland (Stina Westman), Sweden (Mauritz Danielsson), the Netherlands (Vera Mol), Norway (Geir Vangen), Poland (Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz) were present so quorum was confirmed. 
      2. All decisions taken by the Annual Assembly require a 2/3 majority of the votes (present and proxy). (source: EMREX website https://emrex.eu/about-us/)
         
   4. Approval of agenda
      1. Jan Joost Norder presented the Agenda of the meeting
      2. The agenda was approved with the following changes: 
         1. item 4 (Block Chain from EMREX perspective) to be addressed last as item 7
         2. Item 3 (New associate or full members) to be addressed after 4 due to delay of Croation members. 
      3. Agenda items suggested by participants (Guido Bacharach)
         
         1. Organizational expenditure of EMREX UG
         2. Current news in Germany  
            
         3. Fields suggested to EMREX standard
      4. Introductions were made
         1. Executive committee: Jan Joost Norder, Tor Fridell, Geir Vangen, Jukka Kohtanen, Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz
            
         2. Participants: Lara Anastasiou, Stina Westman, Katrin Fohmann, Måns Thuresson, Vera Mol, Guido Bacharach, Per Zettervall, Mauritz Danielsson  
3. Executive Committee’s report
   1. Yearly report 2018: Tor Fridell presented the Yearly report of 2018 (slides)
      1. The usage statistics for EMREX in 2018 were presented. The most usage has been by Swedish and Norwegian students.In Poland every university has their own SMP within their student information systems, which makes the statistics look different from other countries.
      2. The EMREX website (https://emrex.eu/) has been renewed to maintain and gain interest in EMREX. DUO is the member in charge of the new website.
      3. News from EMREX members
         1. Croatia (Jan Joost Norder): NCP live since August 2018. Formal acceptance as full member in this meeting.
            
         2. Denmark (Tor Fridell): Denmark is changing all their SIS systems and they are not using Emrex actively at the moment.
         3. Finland (Jukka Kohtanen): NCP covering all HEIs but actual usage is lower than expected. This is at least partially due to large SIS migrations. Learning opportunity data will be developed to be available more comprehensively
            
         4. Italy (Tor Fridell): No news or changes currently reported. Same installation solution as in Poland.
            
         5. Netherlands (Jan-Joost Norder): NCP is live but experiencing problems. ELMO 1.2.use. EMREX client to be developed in summer of 2019.
            
         6. Norway (Geir Vangen): All higher education now connected. ELMO 1.3. in use. Extended use in recruitment systems. Plans to automate processed based on EMREX data. Preparations are made towards use of eIDAS. Vocational Higher Education to be added to the Diploma Register, ministry funding. 
         7. Sweden (Tor Fridell): NCP and SMP covers all HEIs in Sweden. Secure transfer of pdf for staff- 
            
         8. Questions 
            
            1. Katrin Fohmann: What kind of feedback does EMREX get from universities? Tor: this is a solution for a small part of the data flow. Need to automate the data flows so it can work as part of larger solutions. Geir: EMREX is not just for student exchange but enabling mydata way of using data for e.g. life-long learning. Jan Joost Norder: Many different ways of utilizing the ecosystem. 
            2. Guido Bacharach: Can one tell from the statistics if the collaboration has been succesful? Many different models so cannot necessarily compare. 
            3. Guido Bacharach: What countries are using secondary education data? Netherlands at least.
               
      4. Changes to the executive committee
         1. Since the last annual assembly there have been changes in the executive committee that was elected.l In Finland, Jukka Kohtanen replaced Jonna Korhonen who changed jobs. Jan-Joost Norder was elected as the new chair. Tor Fridell replaced Johan Bergström who moved jobs as the secretary of the EC.
      5. Outcomes of the activities
         1. Newsletters were sent, next year plan to extend the amount of newsletters
         2. Two new members, Croatia and Netherlands, has joined the EMREX User Group during 2018  
            
      6. ELMO standard
         
         1. Work was done within ELMO. Diploma Supplement information on ELMO.
      7. The materials can be found on the Emrex website
   2. Year Plan 2019: The Year Plan for 2019 was presented
      1. Ongoing EU-projects (Geir): Meeting have been started with Europass because the commision has obligated Europass to make their diploma data available in ELMO format also
         
      2. Website work continues to make it more informative and usable. 
      3. Standars work continues: 
      1. ELMO, DigiReg project run by the ENIC/NARIC organisations: discussion on how ELMO could be used in recognition process
      2. eIDAS work 
      4. Extending the network: Trying to get more countries to join the network, possible China, Germany, Belgium. 
      5. Questions: 
         1. Mauritz Danielsson: Calls for a EU project in 2020 for EMREX 2.0.? This should be planned for the year plan 2019. Jan Joost Norder: Decision to add: Funding opportunities for EMREX development will be sought in 2019.
         2. Guido Bacharach: would like to see ELMO addititions in the year plan: Jan Joost Norder: Decision to add: Always looking to add standards to ELMO standards
            
4. Acceptance of documents
   1. Yearly report 2018
      1. The yearly report was accepted.
   2. Year Plan 2019
      
      1. The yearly plan was accepted with the addition that funding opportunities for EMREX development will be sought in 2019 and that new standards will be reviewed for ELMO standards. The Executive Committee to finalize wording. 
5. New associate or full members
   1. Agency for Science and Higher Education in Croatia was proposed as a new full member of the EMREX User Group. 
   2. Agency for Science and Higher Education in Croatia was formally accepted as a full member to the EMREX User Group. 
6. Questions to the Executive Committee
1. Agenda items suggested by participants (Guido Bacharach)
1. Secondary level data already addressed
2. More data is needed in Germany, is there a special process to suggest new fields to ELMO? 
   
   1. Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz: What data is needed? Guido Bacharach: learners (ID does not include name gender birthplace, birthday, address), learning opportunities. Grading scale and distribution were discussed but should work as is. It was agreed to continue the discussion via Github. 
3. Service organization and expenditure of EMREX
   1. EMREX was a project and still works as part of national infrastructures with national funding and comes together via the user group. How long can we work on this basis? What is needed to uphold a professional service structure?
   2. Discussion about the business model of EMREX and ways of organizing the necessary international development and support.
      1. Tor Fridell: There has been discussion sometimes that everyone who has NCP should put also some support efforts to EMREX. This would require a change to our statutes and organization.
      2. Per Zettervall: the distributed structure is also a strength of EMREX 
      3. Guido Bacharach: this model will be challenged if there is rapid growth in the usage of the service.
      4. Katrin Fohmann: is this model manageable? should we have someone who is responsible for EMREX?
      5. Jan Joost Norder: currently the structure is stable. The recent changes in the EC also forced to think about the stability issues and what should be done to guarantee that stability.
      6. Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz: also the question of infrastructure, currently we take care of our own infrastructure. The registry however is currently in Norway. If we would have to advertise it widely, we would need to stay more about the formal basis for keeping the registry. There has also been discussion about integrating the registry of EMREX with EWP, but the discussion is not active at the moment. The question of the registry will have to be addressed again. 
      7. Jan Joost: Also the ownership of EMREX should discussed. 
      8. Per: There is not enough information about EMREX in the organisation's leadership making the decisions to join or use
      9. Janina: We need visibility and strong partners. Need to plan together how it's best to organize for the future.
      10. Jan Joost: To summarise, the current organization model works for now but we need visibility for it.
7. Block Chain Blockchain from EMREX perspective (Mirko Stanic, slides) 
   1. Mirko Stanic presented the potential of block chain blockchain for EMREX.
      1. Blockchain is a result on consensus protocol based on proof of work; distributed ledger, immutable, sequential. Ensuring security important. 
      2. Two types of blockchains: permission less (untrustful) and permission (trust)
      3. Uses for blockchain in education? Few examples: Issuing certificates and accreditation of certificates; student identification; registering recognition prior learning (RPL); tracking intellectual property or citations in research papers.
      4. Where does EMREX come in?  A possibility to extend the EMREX technical solution with techniques such as blockchain. Format for issuing certificates for students, spreading ELMO user and service base, proliferation EMREX brand. A potential problem that EMREX faces at the moment is the lack of SMP's. Deferred processing go NCP outputs; currently exchange has to be real time, dependence on proliferation of SMPs.
         
      5. Blockchain in Education JRC report:  https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/blockchain-education 
         
         1. Europe should support the creation of digital meta-data standards for educational records; standards for identification of students, recording formal and non-formal student accomplishment
            
      6. Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz: when developing EMREX, the protocol was the easy part, the data to produce ELMO was difficult and to unpack that data. This packing and unpacking will not be eased by blockchain. Mirko: yes, and for this reason a pdf was also included. But has it lowered the barrier to use EMREX? How will the EMREX solution persevere if users do not have life-long IDs or institutions in charge of NCPs cease to exist? The technical solution could change underneath while the EMREX brand remains.
      7. Geir Vangen: SMPs have been built in, lot of work. The main part is the work to produce the data, not to access it.
      8. Discussion about the technical solutions for the future when dealing with a large persistent distributed infrastructure. It was discussed that EMREX work should also involve finding new use cases for ELMO.
8. Meeting close
   1. Next annual assembly will be planned in conjunction with EUNIS 2020 in Helsinki
   2. The participants thanked the Executive committee for their good work. 
   3. The meeting was closed by the chair at 18:35.