What is the digital maturity model?
The Digital Maturity Model was designed as a tool to assess a National Society’s (NS) data and digital capabilities. It maps a NS’ current (as-is) and future (to-be) capabilities across three domains: people, process and technology. It encourages NS to develop their own roadmap for digital transformation and provides a basis to assess progress. With all of its 192 National Societies, the International Federation of the Red Cross Red Crescent network presents an enormous wealth and variety of data and digital capabilities. The digital maturity model was adopted as a key approach in the IFRC’s digital transformation strategy IFRC’s digital transformation strategy to recognize these differing capabilities and to scope opportunities for digital transformation at various levels.
In brief, the model is organized along three main steps:
- Step 1: National Societies focus on getting basic information technology and having functioning telecommunications in place.
- Step 2: National Societies focus on multidisciplinary digital and data teams that share data across the whole organization for insight and analysis.
- Step 3: National Societies will have digital services, be data-driven, and the organization will have flexible and scalable information technology infrastructure to build new services.
The model is deployed as a guidance for NS to accelerate their ambitions for digital transformation and to formulate their digital transformation strategy. This in turn will support NS to define funding needs vis-à-vis donors for the continuous improvement of their humanitarian service delivery.
What is the digital transformation assessment?
The digital maturity model is integrated in an in-depth digital transformation assessment to develop a roadmap for Digital Transformation at national society level. It was designed for setting digital transformation priorities for the humanitarian services of a national society. In the IFRC Digital transformation Strategy it is assumed that by focusing on the digital transformation of the humanitarian services, the other supporting functions such as HR, Finance, Communication, Marketing and others will follow. Although the separation of departments is not so clear cut, humanitarian service delivery should still be the top priority of our digital transformation. It provides a clear why and has the biggest impact on our work.
What does the process look like?
The steps of the digital transformation assessment are as follows:
- Identifying assessment team and steering committee with key internal stakeholders
- Understanding and explaining the Digital Maturity Model
- Understanding digital transformation in the context of your National Society; setting high-level ambition
- Conducting interviews and workshops with a diverse range of central and decentral staff and volunteers, and where needed external partners, such as partner national societies, IFRC, ICRC, donors and government
- Analysis of information from the interviews and workshops to understand where the organization currently is and could go to with data and digital
- Developing a roadmap and setting interventions to identify concrete actions, milestones and responsibilities
- Transferring insights into the national society and building data and digital literacy on the go. Presenting the main findings and the roadmap to all people involved in the process
Validating the digital transformation assessment
As the digital transformation assessment was initially developed by 510 and Ortec to assess the Netherlands’ Red Cross’ digital maturity and formulate its digital transformation strategy, it is has been piloted for validation with a wider set of National Societies, like in Ivory Coast, Kenya, Uganda, Norway, Philippines. The Ivory Coast Red Cross Society has started with the first phase of the assessment. According to Stéphane N’Dja Ake, the Data Manager of the Ivory Coast Red Cross Society, the assessment will help the National Society move from using paper to digital tools.
N’Dja elaborated that as a national society, the Ivory Coast RCS wants to understand the different processes and tools that could be available to utilize when needed. N’Dja stated that the assessment confirmed some assumptions he had regarding the digital maturity of the NS. He stated, “the level of knowledge was not the same from one department to another. The digital tools were being used but the staff didn't have a deep understanding of those tools”. He emphasized that the NS has the ambition, resource and capacity to apply all that they have already learned about digital tools such as Geographic Information System, Kobo Collect, and Power BI prior to implementing them in their daily work.
When asked what he aims to achieve from the extensive digital transformation assessment, N’Dja explained “I aim to gain as much as I can from what this assessment is offering, from awareness about our national society’s maturity level to new digital techniques that we can acquire for our daily work”. He expanded on his statement and said, “being involved in the digital transformation movement is important to us and will help us evolve our capabilities to include more digital tools that will efficiently improve our services”. N’Dja continued that the national society management were already thinking of participating in the assessment even if it had not yet been formalized. He then stated, “to grow, however, there are certain aspects that we need to achieve, such as having the right equipment. We are hoping to improve on many levels with our involvement in this assessment”.
Digital transformation, one of the seven transformations that the Red Cross and Red Crescent must embrace for IFRC’s Strategy 2030, is a process that takes dedication and perseverance to reach an achievable goal. The process could at times be lengthy, due to the lack of resources, financial and other. According to N’Dja, “moving towards digital transformation is in general a long process. Some steps need to be taken slowly and carefully to achieve a respectable and sustainable output at the end”. He elaborated, “if we move rapidly with this transformation, we might neglect certain opportunities and we prefer conducting this process correctly”.
What are the next steps?
By participating in the digital transformation pilot, a National Society can lead by example by becoming an early adopter of the digital transformation movement that fosters this cultural change. According to N’Dja, “the maturity level of the National Society is currently being indicated, after that result we will have to see what are our next steps”. Once the maturity level of the National Society is established, the Ivory Coast Red Cross Society will report on a strategy by which they will continue on. As a closing remark, N’Dja stated, “the national society, as a whole, wants to be involved in the digital transformation movement and is looking forward to evolving digitally”.