Taking digital transformation forward in your organisation
A toolkit to support assessment of digital maturity, development of strategies, roadmaps and action plans for digital transformation in higher education.
The UK’s higher education sector needs to respond to frequent disruptions with strong leadership and resilience. Strategic long-term approaches are necessary to address challenges such as economic downturns, resource constraints, climate change, cyber security and digital and other inequalities. Additionally, agile responses are needed to address short-term disruptions such as pandemics, emerging technologies or localised events.
The complexities and range of business activities across a provider organisation can result in reactive, piecemeal responses to operational needs, which are often compounded by traditional hierarchical structures and ways of working. Effective and appropriate digital investment offers an opportunity to address inefficient and ineffective systems that hamper the practices of staff across the organisation. Digital investment, however, is not enough to stimulate the kind of organisational change that could bring efficiencies, support strategic missions and values and improve the work or learning experiences of staff and students and their well being.
“Digital transformation is a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution’s business model, strategic directions, and value proposition.”
Brown et al. Digital Transformation Signals: Is Your Institution on the Journey? Enterprise Connections (blog), EDUCAUSE Review, May 12, 2020
Many people recognise that digital transformation (sometimes called DX) offers a more holistic approach that addresses the need for organisation-wide cultural, operational and technical shifts to transform business, change practices and achieve strategic vision and missions.
Alternative text for digital transformation impact diagram
A diagram illustrating how digital transformation impacts on an organisation.
- Top left: Strategic vision - leadership, values, planning, investment
- Top right: People - expectations, activities, experiences, capabilities
- Bottom left: Infrastructure - systems, data, networks, physical spaces
- Bottom right: Core business activities - operations, workflows, processes, practices
A diagram illustrating how digital transformation impacts on an organisation.
- Top left: Strategic vision - leadership, values, planning, investment
- Top right: People - expectations, activities, experiences, capabilities
- Bottom left: Infrastructure - systems, data, networks, physical spaces
- Bottom right: Core business activities - operations, workflows, processes, practices
Why digital transformation is important for HE
HE providers can learn from digital transformation approaches and models in other sectors, but they have unique needs and complexities that relate to their individual levels of digital maturity. Many are creating new digital transformation strategies and some are incorporating digital into existing strategies, but all are recognising the need for clarity around the role of digital in the delivery of institutional ambitions, missions and values.
“Effective digital transformation is a difficult problem to crack in any sector, and HE is probably a couple of steps behind other sectors. While everyone acknowledges the need for it, there’s a lack of understanding about how best to move forward. Jisc’s work in this area will be instrumental in enabling all HEIs to create their own digital transformation frameworks and strategies that balance pragmatism with innovation and ambition.“
Professor Raheel Nawaz, pro vice chancellor (digital transformation), Staffordshire University
Successful digital transformation requires effective digital leadership, appropriate investment, robust secure infrastructure, engaged stakeholders and digitally capable staff and students. The complexities and scale of higher education providers present challenges to achieving ambitious digital strategies.
Our 2023 digital strategies in UK higher education: making digital mainstream report offers insights into how universities are taking forward their digital strategies and explores the critical success factors for their implementation. In it, ten senior leaders outline their visions for digital and what they are putting in place to drive change forward – whether that be technical, cultural or pedagogical. We suggest some scenarios for how digital may change and expand provision and we offer some prompts for those tasked with developing a digital strategy.
In 2024, we collaborated with 24 higher education providers in a research pilot to see how they used the toolkit to enhance their digital transformation.
Read the report and case studies and view the five institutional video case studies on YouTube.
"We have expanded our horizons regarding the true breadth of digital transformation and Jisc’s toolkit has enabled us to develop a version of a matrix that allows us to both track progress, ascribe [digital] maturity levels and confirm responsibility and ownership for each activity. In turn, this has enabled us to quantify areas of strength and areas for development in a way that has not previously been available, which we have been able to communicate to the business."
Rachael Johnson-Duval, chief information officer, Bath Spa University
This infographic offers a brief introduction to the different parts of this toolkit and how they can help your digital transformation strategies and plans. This can also support discussions with executive leadership teams.
- Download the digital transformation toolkit infographic (pdf)
- Download the digital transformation toolkit infographic (pptx)
Who should be involved in creating, leading and implementing digital transformation?
Although everyone in the organisation will be impacted by digital transformation strategy/ies it falls to senior leaders, governors, managers and change agents to create, lead and implement it/them. This will require coordination across a range of different roles and departments within organisational structures. Senior leadership teams need to be able to demonstrate and model effective digital leadership and engage stakeholders accordingly.
Stakeholder engagement is a critical factor at all stages of digital transformation. Early stakeholder engagement provides valuable insights into the mindsets and practices of different staff and students and can feed into baselining evidence. It can prepare people for upcoming changes and help identify digital champions and leaders for some activities. Establishing and encouraging a two way dialogue stimulates participation in the innovation process, and can accelerate cultural adoption. In addition, early stakeholder engagement can result in wider benefits: nurturing a collaborative culture, encouraging cross-institutional networking, and providing a deeper appreciation of one another’s roles within the wider business.
“How can we get people to acknowledge that work needs to be done? How can we get people and senior leaders to acknowledge that they need to be engaged with this? And I think there are certain things as senior leaders where you've got particular agency, you've got to get yourself out there and acknowledge and be seen to understand what it means to effect change for real people, you can't just put it in a policy and expect that's a job done, because it isn't.”
Professor Paul Bartholomew, vice chancellor, Ulster University
It is important to develop a shared understanding of terminology so that all stakeholders can feel involved in digital transformation plans and activities. A good starting point is our glossary which provides descriptions of key words and phrases used in the materials.
Next section: Towards digital transformation
Steps for developing and embedding a strategic approach to digital transformation in your organisation
This toolkit is made available under Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-SA).