More info

DigiUGov’s ambition is to establish collaborations, sustainable structures and governance mechanisms in the participating Latin-American and European HE institutions by the end of 2024. This project is dedicated to improve the institutional support for (1) early stage and experienced academic staff in teaching in digital formats (2) sharing of resources and training courses (3) digitalization of the universities’ administration. To enable this, (4) Strategy building and effective governance structures will be reinforced through international exchange of expertise and consultation provided by the DigiUGov community. 

Among the pre-defined regional priorities, this project mainly focuses on digital transformation as a common challenge and opportunity in teaching and administration at the participating institutions. Since 2017, national governments have launched nationwide digitalization strategies, for example the Mexico’s E government Strategy (2017), the Colombian National Digitalization Strategy (2019) and the Digitalization Strategy of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2019), Digital Spain 2025 (2020) which affect the HE systems on a large scale. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the partner institutions switched their classroom teaching to a digital mode and digitalized their administrative services where possible. Boosted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Latin America and Europe are facing the peak of digital transformation within their HE systems. Meanwhile, the DigiUGov community attaches great attention to equity and diversity through the digitalization process in HE sectors in the participating nations. Digital teaching scenarios and administrative services shall be designed for non-discriminating and barrier-free access. Diversity is defined as a cross sectional topic through targeted project activities. The DigiUGov institutions understand their common role in digital transformation as the actors of change, not only on the technical level, but also on the structural and cultural level. 

Thus, the participating institutions reach consensus and discovered the following common objectives in general:

N

The project is designed to promote European strategies on a global scale. The DigiUGov community attaches great importance to the European values as well as the universities’ lighthouse function in digital transformation, diversity equity and its adequate governance.

N

To improve of their employability and career development, graduates, doctoral and post-
doctoral researchers in the partnership should be equipped with future-proof digital and
diversity competence specifically, in order to ensure high quality and inclusive e-learning offers.

N

In order to minimize digital divide, the e-learning offers and administrative services should be customer-oriented and easy accessible. The project audience consists of students, (early stage) researchers, administrative staff, HE managers and representatives in the participating institutions. Therefore, the DigiUGov project should also set focus on raising awareness among the project audience on diversity dimensions such as ethnicity, race, gender and social economic status.