A Standardised Digital Maturity Index and the Application to Higher Education

10 pages•Published: August 9, 2023

Abstract

Digital change is everywhere. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are adopting advanced digital tools and pursuing digital strategies. In order to monitor the success of these efforts, the ongoing changes need to be made visible, i.e., objectively quantified. Consequently, there is a need for comparative measures to provide specific guidance and the potential for a neutral overview. Often, institutions compare their development either at the level of management by objectives or in benchmarking initiatives specific to the type of university. Measures are required to continuously deliver data even in the midst of major organisational changes. Currently-used measures often are subjective to the observer and the institution. If so, they are less suitable for the purposes mentioned above.
This paper presents a Digital Maturity Index (DMI), which is generic in its structure but can be easily adapted to a specific sector such as the higher education ecosystem. It consists of 11 simple fact-based, closed-ended questions about the evaluated organisational scope, such as a process or a business capability. The index items have been validated and the relative weights have been adjusted from a broad national survey of one-third of all German universities, hence the derived weights reflect common expectations of this sector.
In addition to validating the index, the results are applied to the rest of the survey data. The status of digitisation in German higher education is presented using the Higher Education Reference Model (HERM). Additional insights made possible by the robust but discriminating measurement of the new tool are presented. A summary discusses the index’s potential, shortcomings, and additional areas of application.

Keyphrases: digital index, enterprise architecture, germany, higher education, maturity, national survey

In: Jean-François Desnos and Martín López Nores (editors). Proceedings of European University Information Systems Congress 2023, vol 95, pages 17-26.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/vRXj
	https://doi.org/10.29007/kc1n

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{EUNIS2023:Standardised_Digital_Maturity_Index,
  author    = {Markus von der Heyde},
  title     = {A Standardised Digital Maturity Index and the Application to Higher Education},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of European University Information Systems Congress 2023},
  editor    = {Jean-François Desnos and Martín López Nores},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {95},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/vRXj},
  doi       = {10.29007/kc1n},
  pages     = {17-26},
  year      = {2023}}

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