The contract between the European Commission and EWP+ Consortium led by the European University Foundation, which provides for the continued operation of Erasmus Without Paper (EWP), will expire during the 2025/26 academic year.
We would like to thank the European Commission for the excellent cooperation and its financial backing in recent years. This has been instrumental in enabling the digitalisation of the Erasmus+ programme, further to several years during which the EWP infrastructure was funded by the EUF and its member universities.
A formidable endeavour
Few could have imagined the transformative impact that a simple – but radical – idea first uttered in the hallways of Ghent University back in 2012 would eventually have: what if the IT systems that support student exchange among universities were able to exchange data among themselves?
The EWP consortium took upon this challenge by setting itself three key goals:
- To provide technical solutions for all cross-border steps integral to the mobility lifecycle;
- To ensure that the required infrastructure would be ready well before the start of the 2021 Erasmus+ programme;
- To make sure this ambitious digital transformation process would leave no higher education institutions behind.
The first and second goals were achieved when EWP was launched in 2018, enabling the exchange of inter-institutional agreements, nominations, learning agreements and transcript of records data; the third goal was enabled by the EWP Dashboard, which had been operating since 2016.
Unfortunately, the run-up for the 2021 programme did not foresee any quality control measures to validate the EWP implementations across external IT systems – a decision which would eventually have a profound negative impact on the renewal of inter-institutional agreements (see more information here). And yet both the EWP Network and the EWP Dashboard have withstood the challenge of scaling up from 30 to +3000 and from 100 to +2500 nodes/users respectively, while digital learning agreements have worked very well out of the box.
This, combined with the extraordinary efforts of higher education institutions and international relations officers from across Europe, is how in just under four years (2019-2022) Europe equipped itself with the most modern student data ecosystem in the world. The fact that 99,8% of all ECHE holders doing study mobilities are connected to EWP and more than 1 million digital agreements have already been exchanged are a testament to how much has been achieved during a short and challenging period.
A promising future
The next phase of the digitalisation of Erasmus+ is a great opportunity to improve on the existing digital tools and services. The lessons learned during more than ten years of pioneering work can inform the planning of next steps, providing a solid basis for future endeavours.
The European Commission will have access to the entirety of the source code of the EWP building blocks, as well as extensive technical documentation and a series of handover meetings with experts from the EWP+ consortium. The EWP team, in turn, look forward to seeing key features which were completed or announced during the last few years – be it transcripts of records, the ability of the Erasmus+ App to connect with more IT solutions or automatic conformance testing – finally being made widely available.
Of central importance to universities, and an essential step to tap into significant efficiency gains, is the often delayed roll-out of the digital nomination functionality; furthermore, tests among EUF universities in 13 countries have already shown the electronic data exchange of nomination data to work correctly among 4 out of 5 of the most widely used IT systems connected to the EWP Network.
What to expect
Further to the completion of the existing contract, the development of new digital tools and services will be performed by a new contractor selected through a tendering procedure launched by the European Commission. The EWP+ Consortium has decided not to apply for this tender because it has reservations about important technical architecture changes that it sets forth.
The key expectation of the EWP+ consortium and most certainly the higher education community as a whole is that:
- in ESCI phase II the digital services pioneered by EWP will work as well or better than is currently the case;
- the transition from EWP towards the changes envisioned by the European Commission will be seamless to all users of all systems. This ought to be ensured by a detailed transition plan that safeguards the normal day to day work of all EWP users.
This is why we have informed the European Commission that the EWP+ consortium is available to continue to make the existing digital infrastructure available past October 2025, should this help avoid any unnecessary disruption. The EUF and its member universities have been the driving force behind EWP and will remain engaged in the digital transformation of Erasmus+, which is a very important topic to higher education institutions across Europe.
About the EWP Dashboard
When change is afoot, stability and dependability are of particular importance. The EWP Dashboard is a state-of-the-art application that has been operational since 2016, and it remains the reference implementation for the whole of the EWP Network. The EWP Dashboard is also the only pan-European IT solution developed by universities and for universities, and this will not change in the foreseeable future.
This is why rumours about the EWP Dashboard being discontinued/stopping to operate are unfounded – we would like to reassure all institutions relying on the EWP Dashboard that the environment in which they carry out their daily work will continue to be available to them regardless of the changes that ESCI phase II might bring.
In fact, after a lengthy period without significant updates, our current focus is on making available a number of long-awaited features in the coming months. We will share more details with all EWP Dashboard users in due time and through the appropriate channels, making sure they are kept well-informed about future developments.
Cover image by freepik