Review the comprehensive results of the official evaluation, sponsored by DUO.

From Lene Oftedal of UNESCO, focused on establishing a global convention for recognition of higher education diplomas and qualifications:

Cape Town and GDN were "eye-openers" for me. Your goals will facilitate:

• Academic cooperation in Higher Education all over the world
• Enhance global student mobility
• Facilitate recognition of Higher Education Qualifications
• Reduce fraud and Diploma Mills

Digitalizing information is crucial to make this happen. But we need to convince those who are not yet part of GDN. For UNESCO, who has a global mandate in higher education, the support and cooperation with the Groningen Declaration Network is of great importance.

From Borhene Chakroun of UNESCO's Section of Youth, Literacy and Skills Development within the Division for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems:

The event in Cape Town was a very fruitful meeting and an "eye-opener" for me on the dynamic landscape of recognition of qualifications, student mobility and digitization of credentials verification. I have three conclusions that I wish to share:

1. Technology is there, and we need to use it in the best way to support mobility, fair and transparent recognition of qualifications. However the landscape is already crowded and there is a risk of lack of interoperability and standardization.
2. A realistic road map to advance the global agenda is that digitization goes hand-in-hand with the "analog complements" -- by strengthening regulations that ensure quality assurance, the use of learning outcomes and the support to learners.
3. There is a need for platforms, networks, and initiative such as the GDN to advance the agenda and make it happen. At the same time, there is a need for leadership and legitimacy.

For UNESCO, who is the leading agency for the Education 2030 agenda, the cooperation with GDN and other stakeholders is of key importance to advance the agenda and address the challenges ahead.

From Peter van der Hijden, independent expert on global higher education:

I take away three messages from the Cape Town GDN meeting:

• The need to transform the network of volunteers into a professional organization that can act as an interlocutor with other players at global level. This need was acknowledged, and a decision was taken accordingly.
• The impact of GDN and its signatories going far beyond technical arrangements made between national student data depositories. The combined work of the Groningen Declaration signatories enables innovative approaches by other parties, be they educational, commercial or political. This was testified, for example, by the presence of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the blended learning startup Kiron.
• The enthousiasm and professionalism of the team of our South African host SAQA, led by its Director Joe Samuels, who had strategically postitioned the GDN meeting between the launch of the African Qualifications Verification Network (AQVN) and a seminar on supporting regional qualifications frameworks. Regional embedding is key to the success of GDN.

From Margaret Wenger of ECE and Navin Vasudev of SAQA, on behalf of the GDN Task Force on Verification Policies and Best Practices:

Leading up to the meeting in Cape Town, we attempted to further define our (rather ambitious) program. I think that we are still in the process of researching current practices and getting those together into a document. From the current practices, we plan to identify best practices; from that, developing best practices guidelines. We were also energized by the AQVN launch; we hope to partner with these types of regional organizations as they develop verification resources and processes. In conjunction with the best practices side of our program, we looked ahead to ways of developing / consolidating a list of data depositories. As part of our agenda, we will be defining terms and activities relating to verification. Challenges include the (large) size of the task force, and assigning tasks and areas of research. We hope / plan to get together this fall in person; if not, then have a series of phone calls to advance our goals.

From Jelger de Boer of DUO, who also serves as Secretary of the GDN Task Force on Empowering Cross Border Enrolment and Student Loan Portability:

It was an inspiring few days, with great energy and impassioned speakers. The Task Force has learned a lot, especially from the presentations given by the other Task Forces. Main takeaway was the lesson that we should make sure to keep the Task Force manageable in terms of size. Too many members makes for difficult deliberations and less effectiveness. Secondly we experienced that small steps can lead to big results. We aim to embrace this philosophy the upcoming year in our new pilots. The Task Force found two new partners to work with in 2016/2017. The National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) and Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD) have both offered to collaborate with the Task Force in pilots on exchanging enrolment data with DUO. We hope to present the results in Melbourne. A very fruitful GDN meeting with great potential for the year ahead!