Can virtual external quality assurance work for HE? The COVID-19 pandemic caught everyone by surprise. Almost all ongoing quality assurance reviews involving campus visits were put on hold and-or deferred. After the initial few months, external quality assurance agencies (EQAAs) had to make decisions. Soon, despite some uneasiness about the loss of universally mandatory physical site visits, EQAAs switched to virtual accreditations to continue with their service. The experiment was surprisingly well received and there is now interest in incorporating these lessons into future plans, as part of a long-awaited digital transformation. The National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education in Indonesia (BAN-PT) is one such agency. It cyclically accredits about 28,000 academic programmes and 4,700 institutions. To manage the huge volume, it had digitalised all aspects of the accreditation process except the on-site review visit.