01 / The Capability Economy

The data standard powering the Capability Economy.

MortarCAPS stewards the world's first sector-owned data standard for higher and vocational education. CAUDIT HERM-aligned. Built by the sector, for the sector — to make institutions, vendors, governments, and learners interoperable in the AI era.

What is MCDS Become a Partner

130+

Institutions engaged
640+

Community members
3

Countries — AU · NZ · CA
V2.0.1

Standard live, V2.1 Jun 2026

02 What is MCDS

This is not another data standard. It is the infrastructure higher learning now depends on.

MCDS is built on the CAUDIT Higher Education Reference Model (HERM). It standardises the entities, semantics, exchange formats, and reference data that universities, TAFEs, colleges, vendors, and regulators need to work as a sector — not as 200 disconnected silos.

Standardised entities

One model. Every system.

Students, courses, credentials, finances, HR, research, locations — all expressed in a shared, peer-reviewed schema that institutions and vendors can rely on.

Open, JSON-API native

Built to integrate.

Modern API contracts, machine-readable reference data, polymorphic standards support (ABS, ISO, Statistics Canada, PESC). No vendor lock-in.

Sector-owned

No vendor controls the standard.

MortarCAPS is an independent not-for-profit. We do not sell software. We govern, we convene, and we protect neutrality.

Live in production

Working at scale today.

130+ institutions engaged across Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. V2.0.1 in production. V2.1 ships June 2026 with HCR & Capability Ontology, V2.2 brings PESC crosswalk in September.

From a credential economy of static artefacts — to a Capability Economy of living, consent-driven human intelligence.

Layer 01

MCDS

The standard. Schema, semantics, reference data. The shared language of higher learning.

Layer 02

Capability Cloud / ANZ CrMS

The rails. A sector-owned exchange for credit, capability, and institutional data movement.

Layer 03

Human Capability Record

The learner-facing layer. Consent-driven, portable, AI-ready records of what someone can actually do.

See the three-layer architecture →

03 Recent highlights

What's happened recently.

A live look at sector partnerships, standard releases, and community announcements.

Read the blog →

04 Founding partners

Backed by the institutions and companies building the future.

Ingenuity Partners

Lead architect of the Data Standard. Decades of enterprise architecture and systems integration experience.
TechnologyOne

Leading Australian enterprise software provider. Integrated SaaS platform for higher education.
Ellucian

Global higher-education software leader. Banner, Colleague, and the broader Ellucian platform serve more than 2,900 institutions worldwide.
CourseLoop
Amazon Web Services

Global leader in cloud infrastructure. Scalable cloud capabilities and analytics for institutions.
Salesforce

Education Cloud, analytics, and AI for learner engagement.
Workato

Enterprise orchestration platform connecting data, processes, and applications via AI workflows.
Microsoft

Cloud, AI, data, security, and education solutions for higher learning.