Introducing Our Digital Maturity Assessment Model
February 2, 2024
By Meghan Hellstern, Facilitator & Trainer, Think Digital
Anyone who’s been working in the world of digital transformation for any length of time knows how vexing and persistent the challenge of evaluating progress can be. Digital transformation is complex, and even more so in the public sector, where there are many moving parts, siloed and stovepiped operations, and overlapping and intersecting dependencies and initiatives. How to make sense of it all!?
We were thrilled to introduce this work to the world at FWD50, one of our favourite conferences that happens every Fall in Ottawa focused on the intersection of government and technology. Our interactive workshop about our digital maturity assessment model was so popular we had to bring in extra seats to accommodate all the interest! You can check out our slides from the presentation at this link.
We shared our “hexagon model” (below) which makes up the core of our Digital Maturity Assessment Model. It includes six different categories, each with 3 sub-categories for a total of 18 different areas of digital maturity that are assessed.
The assessment process itself takes a mixed-methods approach blending quantitative and qualitative analysis with a human-centered design lens. Each of the 18 sub-categories are assessed based on three different indicators each using a different data type. We have termed this a ‘three-stranded braid’ approach that allows for distinct perspectives to be woven into to the analysis of each sub-category:
• Documentation Review Questions: This type provides a view on the organizational perspective as expressed through formal policies, procedures, and rules.
• Survey Questions: This type provides a view on employee perspectives through responses to an online survey sent to the entire organization.
• Workshop Questions: This type provides a view on management practices as informed by a cross-section of management and employees participating in a live workshop with voting.
While quite the endeavour and labour of love to bring us to this point, in many ways the real work begins now that this model is out in the wild. We have big plans to continue iterating upon the work we’ve done with York Region, making the assessment process as accessible and widely available as possible. You can expect to hear more about this soon, so stay tuned here on our blog and other Think Digital channels. We’re also actively seeking folks who want to be part of our user research, testing and development process – if you’re interested, take a few moments to fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this too: do you also struggle with evaluating your digital progress? Could you see a tool like this being useful in your context? What’s missing? If you have questions, thoughts or want to nerd out on this topic, reach out to us anytime – we’d love to hear from you!