Why digital maturity matters more than ever

UK universities are facing the most challenging financial environment in living memory. Falling international student numbers, rising costs and sustained funding pressure mean that every strategic decision – and every investment – carries greater weight than ever before. The immediate imperative to respond to the rise of AI is only increasing the pressure to make the right investment decisions. In this context, leaders cannot afford to make digital transformation decisions on instinct or incomplete information.

Yet many institutions still lack a clear, evidence-based picture of where they actually are on their digital journey. Without that baseline, it’s impossible to know whether investment is going where it’s needed most — or whether it’s reinforcing what already works at the expense of what urgently needs to change.

Across our recent series of Demonstrating Digital Transformation events, one theme has emerged with striking consistency: the institutions making the most meaningful progress are those where digital is owned at the most senior levels and treated as a whole-organisation, holistic endeavour – a strategic priority woven through culture, leadership, people and systems alike.

At the most recent event, co-hosted with the University of Southampton, the university’s vice-president, Wendy Appleby and Professor Andrew Atherton, vice-president international and engagement discussed what this looks like in practice. They described how Jisc’s framework and maturity model for digital transformation helped build shared understanding across the institution and support for more joined-up, user-centred services for staff and students. The University of Westminster, which co-hosted an earlier event in the series, similarly credited our digital capability framework as instrumental in underpinning its Westminster Digital Academy and wider approach to digital skills.

These and other examples from the series are indicators of a shift in how senior leaders across the sector are thinking about digital — and what is now expected of them.

In response to the UUK Transformation and Efficiency Taskforce's call for more coordinated, evidence-driven approaches to institutional change, we’ve developed the UK higher education digital maturity assessment. It’s a carefully designed tool built specifically for this sector and this moment, and there’s no charge to take part.

Unlike commercially available models that focus primarily on technology, this assessment places people and culture at its heart. Drawn from our broader 99-question maturity model, the carefully selected 24 questions cover the areas that matter most to executive and governing body decision-making: strategic alignment, technical legacy, AI-readiness, capability and culture. It only takes about an hour to complete and yields a clear baseline of your organisation’s digital maturity, alongside valuable benchmarking data from across the sector.

It’s a mechanism for leadership teams to take a genuinely whole-organisation view of digital — and, with a shared understanding, to have better-informed conversations about what’s working well and where investment should go next.

Every organisation that completes the assessment contributes to something bigger than their own institution. We are asking all vice chancellors and chief operating officers to ensure the assessment is completed on behalf of their organisation.

In September, Jisc will present a sector-wide picture of digital maturity at the UUK annual conference, providing the kind of collective intelligence that can shape policy, investment and collaboration for years to come. And every institution that takes part in the assessment will be able to benchmark its own digital maturity against the sector-wide findings.

But that picture is only as powerful as the number of institutions who help build it.

The assessment is open now, and we ask all vice chancellors and chief operating officers to complete it by 30 June 2026.