The unexpectedly sudden change in working conditions, triggered by the Corona pandemic, poses major challenges for public administrations. Within a very short period of time, solutions had to be found in recent weeks for administrative staff working almost completely digitally. The need for digital solutions for the daily work of the public sector in Germany is currently more topical than ever. The time pressure under which the unexpected changeover took place has clearly shown that the Public Sector still has some steps ahead of it in order to be able to offer its administrative services as smoothly as possible in our digital age.

The key to a successful digital transformation is not only the right hardware and software solutions, but also secure and customized tools and user-friendly access. It is also essential to have well-qualified administrative staff who are competent and experienced in using new digital working methods and tools. The aim of the Qualifica Digitalis project is therefore to develop recommendations for action for the qualification of employees for digital administrative work, since there is still a great need to catch up on skills nationwide. The two and a half year project aims to analyse competence requirements and qualification developments, to draw strategic conclusions for the qualification process and finally to provide concrete recommendations for action.

Fraunhofer FOKUS will present the preliminary results of its meta-study at the expert workshop on June 4, in order to discuss and evaluate them with experts from the project network. The feedback of the participants will be taken into account in the further elaboration of the metastudy. This procedure underlines the transdisciplinary character of the project, in which science and practice work closely together to achieve results that are as close as possible to practice. The meta-study will be published this summer and will form the basis for the subsequent standardized survey of experts and executives in six selected domains on the competence requirements in the context of digital transformation. Together with the Institute for Information Management Bremen and the German Research Institute for Public Administration in Speyer, Fraunhofer FOKUS is responsible for the scientific expertise within Qualifica Digitalis and supports all project phases.

The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen is in charge of the project under the leadership of the State Councillor for Finance Henning Lühr. The Federal Ministry of the Interior as well as the federal states of Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, selected local authorities, the trade union ver.di and the German Federation of Civil Servants as well as other actors from science and education are participating in the project.