Digital with it!? - How the digital transformation of the social sector can succeed

To ensure that the dig­i­tal change in the future is not dri­ven sole­ly by eco­nom­ic inter­ests, a debate is need­ed on what the dig­i­tal soci­ety of tomor­row should look like.

Final­ly, the dri­ve for inno­va­tion offers sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for the social sec­tor. Because digi­ti­sa­tion can also mean more par­tic­i­pa­tion, more effec­tive work flows and more inno­v­a­tive busi­ness models.

The report ​“Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion needs civ­il society” …

• out­lines ways in which social actors can become more dig­i­tal,
• reports how indi­vid­ual play­erssuc­ceed in using digi­ti­sa­tion as a tool for orga­ni­za­tion­al devel­op­ment,
• dis­cuss­es var­i­ous digi­ti­sa­tion strate­gies, for orga­ni­za­tions and foun­da­tions as well as for asso­ci­a­tions and ini­tia­tives, and
• lists almost 340 select­ed projects from Ger­many and abroad that are suc­cess­ful­ly address­ing the dig­i­tal change.

The report is intend­ed to encour­age and pro­vide sug­ges­tions, with­out exclud­ing the problems.

Project part­ners: Robert Bosch Stiftung, Ber­tels­mann Stiftung, Stiftung Neue Ver­ant­wor­tung, PHI­NEO | Dura­tion: 2018 – 2019

Cur­rent­ly, the social sec­tor is dig­i­tal­ly divid­ed in two groups:

• On one side is the large group of play­ers for whom digi­ti­sa­tion is a new con­cept. This group strug­gles with the uncer­tain­ties of imple­ment­ing digi­ti­sa­tion into exist­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al log­ics. It is a com­plex under­tak­ing, as the use of dig­i­tal process­es chal­lenges tra­di­tion­al work­ing meth­ods and hierarchies.
• On the oth­er side, there is a small­er group of actors who have car­ried digi­ti­sa­tion in their orga­ni­za­tion­al DNA since their foun­da­tion. These play­ers are only get­ting involved because they want to devel­op spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal solu­tions. How­ev­er, these actors are often less net­worked with­in the sector.
• It would make sense to bring both sides into dia­logue with each oth­er in order to cre­ate mutu­al syn­er­gies. The report should also help to achieve this.

Our inten­tion is to make digi­ti­sa­tion an issue. Above all, we want to gett civ­il soci­ety start­ing to devel­op its own digi­ti­sa­tion strategies!