DIRECTIONS research project strengthens trust in digital education solutions

The DIRECTIONS research project provides guidance in the growing market for digital education solutions. With the new declaration of commitment, providers show that they take the protection of pupils' personal data seriously. Schools and school authorities can now see at a glance which school information systems handle sensitive information responsibly. The declaration promotes comparability, creates trust and contributes to a safe digital learning environment.

The Faculty of Public Law, IT Law & Environmental Law at the university, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hornung (Faculty 7, Economics), has developed a catalog of criteria that forms the basis for the declaration of commitment. The catalog defines the data protection requirements for school information systems that a system provider must comply with (directions-cert.de/ergebnisse).

DIRECTIONS is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with 6.3 million euros.

SBE network solutions GmbH was the first company to publish the voluntary commitment with its LogoDIDACT school server solution. Other providers such as Landesinitiative n-21: Schulen in Niedersachsen online e. V. with moin.schule and SMART Technologies (Germany) GmbH with the Lumio learning system are completing the test phase together with the consortium and will therefore follow soon. All self-commitment declarations will be documented in the public register www.sve.trusted-cloud.de. The register is managed by the Trusted Cloud e.V. competence network.

The voluntary self-commitment declaration is open to all system providers. In order to do justice to the wide range of school information systems, a variety of providers have gone through the funded test phase of the criteria catalog: Providers of an identity management system, a learning management system, a video conferencing system for the school sector, a school server solution and a content platform or learning platform for teaching. This diversity ensures that the criteria catalog can be applied in practice and is widely usable.

The voluntary commitment is a first, voluntary step. In the next step, DIRECTIONS will develop a formal certification procedure in accordance with Art. 42 GDPR - legally compliant and verifiable by an independent body. Testing will start in summer 2025, after which the certification procedure will be submitted to the German Accreditation Body and the relevant data protection supervisory authorities for approval. Depending on the outcome and duration of this approval, the project consortium hopes that DIRECTIONS will be available on the market in 2026.

Website: https: //www.directions-cert.de

Publications on the project: https: //directions-cert.de/ergebnisse/

Contact: 

Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hornung, LL.M.
Faculty of Public Law, IT Law & Environmental Law
Faculty 7 - Economics
Institute for Business Law (IWR)
Phone: 0561 804-7923
Email:gerrit.hornung[at]uni-kassel[dot]de