Call for cases: Best practices of digitalisation and tech projects

Do you know of fascinating and interesting digitalisation projects? Then help us build a place to learn! The Knowledge Exchange :// Digitalisation (KE:D) looks for more cases. Become a part of the place to go for exploring digitalisation projects. 

The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) is looking for case descriptions of digitalisation projects in order to build a collection of publicly accessible cases that will help facilitate the exchange of knowledge on planning, strategy, implementation and contextuality of digitalisation projects. By telling these stories, we will enable others to learn from the authors’ experiences, create international synergies and hopefully avoid future mistakes. The central point of the KE:D is finding out about contextual information and governance impacts on these cases. This information is key to understanding the details of the cases. Case submissions from the Global South are explicitly encouraged.

The KE:D focuses on the processual level of these projects: how scanning the field before starting the project went, how you approached it, how you implemented it and what happened after. We believe that each of these processes is of interest to others, and therefore we hereby call for your case.

Submission process

If you would like to share your digitalisation case – big or small – please visit our website and pitch your story in less than 500 words. We encourage you to outline key takeaways and issues, learnings and reflections about your case. Our team of editors will get back to you after a short period of time.

For accepted cases, we will share a form with you that contains detailed instructions on how to describe your case in accordance with our guidelines. After a collaborative editing phase, your case will be published on the KE:D. The final versions of these cases will be between two and ten pages in length. They will roughly follow the structure outlined below.

Pitch your case here

Case Structure

The cases within the knowledge exchange will be structured into four parts:

1. Preface 
   • With an added taxonomy for hard data such as timespan, sectors, budget and locality.
   • A brief description of key takeaways as well as a case abstract.
2. Initial situation
   • of your project area, focusing on the process that led up to the cases’ conception.
   • A description of the legal, administrative and cultural context of your case.
   • Guiding questions: Which goals did your case want to achieve? How did you plan for your case? Which outcomes were you expecting?
3. Strategy and implementation 
   • A description of your approach and strategy as well as the reasoning behind your implementation.
   • Guiding questions: Who was involved in the implementation? Did you run into surprises? How did you deal with unforeseen obstacles; especially in the context of culture, administration and policy?
4. Reflecting on the outcomes
   • A critical reflection of your project. What, in hindsight, could have been done differently? What can others learn from your experience?
   • Guiding Questions: What are your thoughts after completing the project? How did it go? Were there surprises, unintended effects or added value you didn’t expect?

About KE:D

The Knowledge Exchange: Digitalisation is an online collection of digitalisation projects, spanning all sizes, sectors and approaches, focussing on the thought processes and courses of action underlying them. It is not only about the solutions per se, but also about the context in which they are embedded: organisational structures, local conditions, legal frameworks and the cultural environment.

The KE:D provides an opportunity to make projects and their impact visible to a broader audience in the field of research, journalism and civil society. The Exchange aims at informing digitalisation experts, project managers and policy makers about cases that might inspire their own projects and provide them with insights about local contexts, regulatory specifications and evaluations of past projects.

We are looking forward to listening to your story and to learning about your project. For any questions or inquiries about the KE:D, please contact Sarah Spitz (sarah.spitz@hiig.de).