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        <h1>Introduction</h1>
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        Our goal is to create Web standards for a credentialing ecosystem that enables people and organizations to issue, store, and request secure and verifiable digital credentials. The technology has applications in a variety of industries including finance, education, healthcare, and government.
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        <h2 class="text-center">Background</h2>
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A <strong><em>credential</em></strong> is a qualification, achievement, quality, or piece of information about an entity’s background, typically used to indicate suitability. A credential could include information such as a name, home address, government ID, professional license, or university degree. The use of credentials to demonstrate capability, membership, status, and minimum legal requirements is a practice as old as society itself. The potential use cases are innumerable, but common important examples are represented here in the domains of: 
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<strong>Education</strong> - where academic credentials and co-curricular activities are recognized and exchanged among learners, institutions, employers or consumers.
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<strong>Workplace</strong> - where an applicant’s certified skill or license is a condition for employment, professional development and promotability.
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<strong>Civil Society</strong> - where access to social benefits and contracts may be based on verifiable conditions such as marital status.
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<strong>Payments</strong> - where the legal right to purchase a product depends on the verifiable age or location of the buyer.
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<strong>Identity</strong> - where an entity presents credentials to prove their identity or qualification.
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<strong>Ownership</strong> - where an entity presents proof of ownership of a particular asset or a right to perform specific operations against a resource. Examples are ownership of securities that entitles the entity to dividend payments or the authority to transact on an account.
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<strong>Internet of Things (IoT)</strong> - where a machine presents credentials that enable it to act on behalf of its owner in a limited capacity, and where that machine can delegate certain tasks to other machines in an ad-hoc way.
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        <h2 class="text-center">Goals</h2>
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A number of W3C member organizations are proposing the creation of a new standardization activity around credentials on the Web with the following goals in mind:
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<strong>Interoperability</strong> and <strong>Portability</strong>. We want to ensure that an open credential can be used by as broad of a range of organizations as possible. We firmly support the notion that a recipient of a credential should be able to store, archive, and migrate credentials throughout their lifetime with relative ease.
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<strong>Scalability</strong>. The credentialing solution should be usable by the 3 billion people using the Web today, and the 6 billion people that will be using the Web by the year 2020.
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<strong>Verifiability</strong>. The veracity of claims made by a credential should be verifiable using the credential itself.
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<strong>Privacy Enhancing</strong> and <strong>Recipient Controlled</strong>. We want a system that protects the privacy of the individual or organization using the credential by placing the recipient in control of who is allowed to access their credential.
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<strong>Extensibility</strong>. Our desire is to construct a foundation where different industry vertical-specific solutions can be built without unnecessary central coordination.
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<strong>Accessibility</strong>. The credentialing solution should be accessible and therefore also usable by the 10% of the world population with disabilities.
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<strong>Patent and Royalty-free</strong>. We are building public infrastructure whose growth should not be limited by patents and royalties. Credentials affect everyone and the technology to create them must be open and free.
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        <h2 class="text-center">Next Steps</h2>
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The Credentials Community Group is open to the public. Anyone may join and participate. If you are interested in diving in deeper, here's the best way to start:
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          <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/accounts/request">Get a W3C account</a> (free) and <a href="https://www.w3.org/community/credentials/join">join</a> the Credentials Community Group</li>
          <li><a href="http://goo.gl/forms/kXzkF7eQJ0">Document</a> your organization's credentialing needs</li>
          <li><a href="minutes/">Participate</a> in the weekly teleconferences</li>
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