DIGITAL MATURITY MODEL FOR BULGARIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Digital technologies have imposed a vast change in the business environment in recent years, requiring rapid digitization of business. Many companies are developing and offering frameworks, models and services for business digitization and helping industry to transform and retain competitive. For example, successful instruments to guide organizations in such changes are so called digital maturity models. Maturity models are developed and offered in various areas, as commerce, accounting, finance, management, etc., allowing assessment of the digitization maturity level based on specific indicators (areas and key elements). Despite the fact that higher education can be considered as a specialized "industry" (with its specific needs in digital transformation), there are not much studies related to digitization in the field of higher education. Some of these studies show that the use of digital maturity models for higher education institutions provides university management to assess the university current level of digitization, to identify areas that can be improved, and to compare the progress of the university with the other higher education institutions. The paper presents a research in this context resulted in development of a digital maturity model suitable for Bulgarian higher education institutions. The research follows a qualitative exploratory method - from exploration of the context, trough analysis of gathered data and knowledge, to interpretation of findings and development of the digital maturity model. The exploration and analysis consider a broad context of the problem, including leading public and commercial metrics used for the evaluation of digital progress, known digital maturity models in business and education areas, strategic and normative documents related to digitization at the national and international level, the general shape of the digital capabilities of Bulgarian higher education institutions. The resulting digital maturity model UniDigMaturity takes into account the national criteria for assessment and accreditation of Bulgarian higher education system, as well. The developed model UniDigMaturity allows an institution to measure its digital maturity level when using digital technologies. The model can easily be adapted and used to measure the digital maturity level of education institutions in any country and any educational level.