A digital maturity model and competencies – some ideas » Community

At the moment many Departments are working out the implications of their digital strategies and how to follow up on the commitments that they made in them.

This is where a digital maturity model becomes useful since to implement such strategies it is handy to know where you are already and where you want to go. I could even use jargon and say – ‘you can set the direction of travel’. A maturity model might help become a map with a ‘digital compass’ for such a journey. Gruesome analogy, sorry.

Of course a lot of people have a good feel of were they are but what if you really want to nail it and say with confidence to someone else, yep we are good at x but not so great at y; and even say what level you are for different dimensions a fairly rigorous model can be an asset.

This is pretty well what I want to do myself and have a map that I can leave for others to follow.

Competencies

One strand of such a model relates to staff competencies something that I had a chat with Julia Chandler from Dfid @juliac2 earlier this week. I had a line in the model about staff capability – but what does this really mean?

But before we start what competency models already exist or might exist? Apparently GDS will be producing some in the future but not yet. GCN have some pretty good ones for communicators. However if we want to become, in DoH’s great phrase ‘Digital first’, that is not going to be enough. What competencies or capabilities will a policy team need for open policy making? What about a Finance team producing open data? Etc.

So these are Julia’s headings that map back nicely to my (I use the term loosely) maturity model.

Creative – writing, edit etc
Communications – tools, techniques etc.
Engagement – using an engagement life-cycle
Security/risk management – governance and propriety issues
Analytics – creating, using and interpreting metrics/data
Awareness/knowledge – of the digital environment etc.

Measuring competence

So how would we measure such competencies?

The usual Gold, Silver and Bronze might work well for each level and a nice badge would be handy.

So if you were a policy wonk and had followed some core training you could be given your Bronze badge (digital of course) and merrily go on your way to start doing exciting stuff.

These are just some thoughts that we wanted to share – so feel free to contribute or contradict. What is missing? Does this all map to the maturity model that we have so far?