The paper "DIGILOG: Towards a Monitoring Platform for Digital Transformation of European Communities" by ZHAW researchers Jonathan Gerber, Jasmin Saxer, Bruno Kreiner and Andreas Weiler has been accepted as a Research Project at the RCIS 2024 (International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science). Jasmin Saxer has presented the work at RCIS2024 and received amazing responses and questions, highlighting the interest and relevance of our research.

The project is a collaboration between the ZHAW Institute of Computer Science, the ZHAW School of Management and Law, the Potsdam University, and the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU). DIGILOG (Digital Transformation at the Local Tier of Government) is an international, interdisciplinary research project on the state of digital transformation at the local tier of government in Europe.

DIGILOG aims to monitor and evaluate the digital transformation of local governments across 47 European countries through an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The project employs a web crawler and machine learning techniques to automate data collection from municipal websites, providing a systematic comparison of digital service offerings and internal digital infrastructures. This is complemented by in-depth case studies in selected municipalities to capture local administrative realities and variances.

The project will generate an openly accessible monitoring platform, offering real-time insights into the digital transformation of European local governments. This platform will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners, contributing to a deeper understanding of long-term digitalization trends and informing future public sector modernization policies.

This work is supported by Grant No. GR 200839 of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and German Research Foundation (DFG) for the research project DIGILOG.