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Information Systems (IS)

The Information Systems research group studies digitalisation in the public sector with an engaged and interventionist approach. The group has been at the forefront of digitalisation in public health in low- and middle-income countries since the 1990’s, and is a cornerstone of the global HISP/DHIS2 community. 

IS Research Group Employees

IS Research Group People

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"?

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?

 

Tags: Information Systems, DHIS2, HISP, Digital Public Goods, Digital Identity, Digitalisation
Published Nov. 21, 2010 6:48 PM - Last modified Feb. 19, 2024 12:02 PM