Presentation of Master Thesis Projects
Our aim
The Information Systems research group aims to strengthen public sector information systems with an emphasis on global digital health. We play a key role in improving the understanding of the complexity of digitalisation and how to achieve systemic and sustainable change.
Our Research Approach
The basis of our work is qualitative and action-oriented research and capacity building. With a socio-technical perspective, we focus on how to strengthen digital public infrastructures and improve the impact of datafication of governance. This includes how we can use digital technologies to tackle emerging global health challenges and the impacts of factors such as climate change. We collaborate with practitioners through the HISP/DHIS2 network and researchers through the ICT for Development (ICT4D) and Information Systems (IS) communities.
We study digitalisation as the utilization of digital technology to change organisational and societal practices and processes. Cutting across sectors and domains, digitalisation comes with the potential to transform and improve public service delivery. At the same time, digitalisation is intrinsically intertwined with its social, institutional, and cultural context, making it an inherently complex endeavour. The Information Systems research group studies digitalisation from three main positions:
- Datafication as the 'translation' of entities and processes into data and the consequences and challenges this has, which ranges from new insight into details and patterns to data-induced forms of exclusion and injustice.
- Digitalisation governance and the organisation of systems design, innovation, and digitalisation processes.
- Digital platforms and infrastructures are networked forms of digital resources and processes designed and cultivated to enable innovation and distributed social value creation.
Our Research Themes
We currently focus our research on the following themes:
Digital platforms for health management
How to strengthen health information systems in low- and middle-income countries, in terms of digital platforms, human capacity, information use and impact? How to do participatory design in platform ecosystems? What are the impact of platforms and how do they contribute to development and for "whom"?
- Braa, J., Monteiro, E. and Sahay, S. (2004) Networks of Action: Sustainable Health Information Systems Across Developing Countries. MIS quarterly, 28(3): 337-362.
- Braa, J., Heywood, A. and Sahay, S. (2012) Improving quality and use of data through data-use workshops: Zanzibar, United Republic of Tanzania. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 90: 379-384.
- Moyo, C., Kaasbøll, J., Nielsen, P. and Sæbø, J. (2016), The Information Transparency Effects of Introducing League Tables in the Health System in Malawi. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, (75): 1-16
- Roland, L. K., Sanner, T. A., Sæbø, J. I., and Monteiro, E. (2017). P for Platform. Architectures of large-scale participatory design. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 29(2): 1-32.
- Nielsen, P., and Sahay, S. (2022) A critical review of the role of technology and context in digital health research. Digital health, 8: 1-10.
Digital Global Public Goods
How can we design, govern, sustain and deal with the tensions of Digital Global Public Goods? How can Digital Global Public Goods promote local innovation and global sharing?
eGovernance and digital government
What are the organisational and institutional characteristics of the public sector as a defining context of how digital technology is governed, designed, implemented and used? How can governments public sector organisations utilise digital technology and data in providing good governance and services.
Education Management Information Systems
How can we apply key learnings and tools from health information system strengthening in the education sector? How can we enable decentralization and empowerment of sub-national administrative levels in the education sector with actionable data? What does scaling a shared digital platform across national borders and domains such as health and education entail and what are the possible limitations? With a focus on establishing and learning from Districts of Excellence, we explore these questions through engaged research in the education data use initiative.
Digital Identity
How is digital identity associated to the production of unfair outcomes on individuals and the society? How can such outcomes be reversed, for the creation of fairer forms of digital ID?
Climate Health
How does the production of climate data relate to health and food security outcomes? How are climate data read and represented through digital platforms, and what data use practices are associated to them?