As we have seen during the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting increase in remote work, many administrative processes and signatures at universities are still paper-based. The nine universities in Baden-Württemberg want to further develop the digitalization of administrative processes, in addition to their daily work. Thus, they have founded the collaborative project “bwUni.digital – Digitale Transformation administrativer Prozesse“ (digital transformation of administrative processes), even before the pandemic hit. The project aims at implementing minimal standards at all universities and at providing opportunities to rethink administrative processes.
The project partners have created think tanks to work on these tasks. Think tank 01, for example, works on digitizing signatures in administrative processes, think tank 02 deals with integrated programs and think tank 03 works on e-learning systems for employee trainings, in particular in the field of data protection as a service for the universities in the Land of Baden-Württemberg. The think tank members are experts from the relevant universities.
The work results from the think tanks are published as white papers. The universities are then provided with these documents so that they have a basis for discussing and working on the digitalization of their processes. According to the concept of bwUni.digital, the results that have been achieved during this first step may also lead to a cooperation of several universities to jointly implement the recommendations from the white paper. Thus, bwUni.digital is the basis for cooperation across universities when it comes to the digital transformation of administrative processes.