About NAD

DigiLocker and NAD are initiatives of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Ministry of Education (formerly Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)) respectively. The concept of NAD is born out of an initiative by Ministry of Education to provide a 24X7 online depository to Academic institutions to store and publish their academic awards. The digital depository shall ensure easy access to and retrieval of an academic award. It shall also validate and guarantee its authenticity and safe storage.

DigiLocker is a provider of NAD services and aims at ‘Digital Empowerment’ of citizen by providing access of authentic digital documents to citizen’s digital document wallet. The issued documents in DigiLocker system are deemed to be at par with original physical documents as per Rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries providing Digital Locker facilities) Rules, 2016.

Maintaining academic awards in an electronic depository would provide benefit to the educational institutions, students and employers by enabling online access of academic awards which will eliminate the need for persons to approach educational institutions for obtaining transcripts of such awards for verification. It would also eliminate fraudulent practices such as forging of awards, by facilitating online verification thereof and maintains the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of the award.

Features of NAD

• NAD will operate in fully online mode.
• Allow lodging of Academic awards in a digital format, maintaining the integrity of access to the database and of the awards lodged in the database.
• Allow students to retrieve their lodged academic awards at any time.
• Allow employers and other person with prior approval of the concerned student to verify the authenticity of any academic award.
• Maintain the authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of the database.

Benefits of NAD

For Academic Institutions

• Permanent and safe record of keeping all academic awards issued.
• No need for issuing duplicate academic awards, students can get it from NAD.
• Effective deterrence to fake and forged paper certificates.
• All academic awards verification needs can be addressed by NAD.
• Efficient, effective and transparent administration.
• Digital Transformation: Provides trusted issued documents.
• Secure Document Gateway: Acts as a secure document exchange platform like payment gateway between trusted issuer and trusted Requester/Verifier with the consent of the Students.
• Real Time Verification: Provides a verification module to verify data directly from issuers after obtaining user consent.

For Students

• Immediate availability of academic awards upon upload by Academic Institution.
• Online, permanent record of academic awards.
• No risk of losing, spoiling, damaging the academic awards.
• Anytime, anywhere and convenient access to academic awards.
• Important Documents Anytime, Anywhere.
• Authentic Documents, Legally at Par with Originals.
• Digital Document Exchange with the consent of the student.
• Faster service Delivery- Government Benefits, Employment, Financial Inclusion, Educational admission, Health.
• Students would be able to access all of their documents from different issuing authorities at one place e.g. Aadhaar, Driving License, Pan Verification Record, Vehicle registration Certificate along with educational awards.

For Verification Users (Employer Companies, Banks etc.)

• Online, quick and reliable verification of academic awards (with prior consent of the student concerned).
• Access to authenticated copy of academic awards.
• No risk of fake and forged Certificates.
• Reduction in cost, time and efforts for verification.

Roles & Responsibilities

Roles & Responsibilities of Academic Institutions (AIs)

The AIs shall:

• Provide certificate templates, data masters etc. to the depositories.
• Provide data of academic awards for lodging the academic awards on NAD.
• Are responsible for accuracy of data of academic awards.
• Identify staff to be trained in NAD system.
• Lodge Awards – Upload awards and seed with Aadhaar / NAD ID.
• Verified & digitally signed data in prescribed formats – maker / checker.
• Data format with certificate template / digitally signed images with data.
• Include student identity with Aadhaar / Unique NAD ID.
• Update Aadhaar / Unique NAD ID in a certificate record.

Roles & Responsibilities of Students

The students shall:

• Register on NAD-Digilocker by providing Aadhaar detail.
• Avail Unique NAD ID in case of non-availability of Aadhaar.
• Submit Aadhaar/ Unique NAD ID to the Academic Institution for verification and seeding their award data with Aadhaar/ Unique NAD ID.
• View and access all awards online at any time in a single account.

A student can thus:

• View/ download digitally signed awards.
• Request printed copy of the certificate.
• Approve/ reject request of any verifier for access to his/ her certificate.
• Send a copy of the certificate to any verifier.

How to register on NAD?

The users should select Digilocker as a sole depository for NAD and the preferred depository for registering into NAD. The link of the depository is as given below:
https://accounts.digitallocker.gov.in/signup

Further details relating to the registration process are available on the website:
https://digilocker.gov.in/