Building a shared baseline for digital maturity across higher education

This project delivers a sector-wide digital maturity assessment for higher education. It is designed to help institutions understand how effectively digital capabilities enable them to deliver their strategic priorities, now and in the years ahead.

The free assessment supports senior leaders to take a more evidence-based approach to digital transformation. It aligns with the Universities UK (UUK) Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce report and responds directly to its recommendation for the sector to baseline digital and data maturity.

By taking part, you will help shape a shared view of digital maturity across higher education and contribute to insights that will inform future Jisc support and guidance.

The problem

Universities are operating in a highly challenging environment. You may be managing rising costs, constrained funding and ageing systems, while responding to fast‑moving developments such as generative AI.

At the same time, expectations around digital teaching, research, services and the student experience continue to grow. Many institutions are investing in digital transformation, but without a common baseline it can be hard to identify priorities, track progress or learn from others.

This project addresses that gap by offering a practical, consistent way to assess digital maturity and benchmark it against anonymised sector data.

What the assessment covers

The online digital maturity assessment is designed for executive decision-making. It draws on our digital transformation framework and digital maturity model for higher education, which were co-created with the higher education sector.

It includes 24 carefully selected questions covering:

• Leadership and organisational culture
• Digital and AI capability and capacity
• Infrastructure and technical legacy
• Data and knowledge management
• Education, research and the wider student experience
• Partnerships, sustainability and inclusion

To support meaningful discussion, the assessment uses five maturity levels, reflecting the range of maturity currently seen across the sector.

Our approach

Phase one: assessment and participation

The assessment was open throughout May and June 2026, giving participating organisations an opportunity to assess their current approach to digital assessment. It could be completed collaboratively, bringing together perspectives from senior leads across education, research and professional services.

Participants received a downloadable summary of their results, providing a useful basis for reflection and discussion and helping to inform the next stages of the project.

Phase two: analysis and insight

Analysis of the anonymised responses has now been completed, identifying sector-level trends, strengths, risks and barriers to progress. The findings are available in the Beyond digital foundations sector briefing (pdf), which provides a concise summary of the key findings for senior leaders, and the full findings report, due to be released towards the end of September, provides more detailed analysis and benchmarking data for the wider sector.

A series of seven thematic papers will be published in October, exploring how our digital transformation framework and maturity model can be applied to specific cross-cutting organisational priorities and current sector challenges. Together these resources highlight how digital maturity assessments can help organisations establish a baseline, identify strengths and gaps, inform strategic reflection and development and plan for continuous improvement.

From autumn 2026, anonymised benchmarking data will also be available through the Explore my data platform, enabling organisations to explore the findings and compare their own position with the wider sector. Institutions that completed the assessment will be contacted when the benchmarking data becomes available.

Organisations wishing to understand how these findings apply within their own context can explore digital maturity in greater depth through our digital transformation consultancy. Drawing on the full digital maturity model, these services support strategic reflection, prioritisation and organisational improvement.

If you are interested in joining a cohort of institutions that we will work with over the next year to explore how the findings from your maturity assessment shape and inform your organisation's work, please contact Lou McGill (lou.mcgill@jisc.ac.uk) or Sarah Knight (sarah.knight@jisc.ac.uk).

You can also stay up to date with this work by joining our working group for digital transformation in higher education.