Seminar on Sustainable Digital Transformations 2022

Note: Read the summary of the seminar.

You are invited to attend our seminar on sustainable digital transformation of healthcare and welfare services, first in our seminar series on Sustainable Digital Transformations. Through this seminar we want to step back from the current rapid digitalization processes in healthcare and welfare services and reflect on the long-term impact of digital transformation. The seminar contains presentations from current research projects, and discussion sessions with practitioners.

This year’s seminar is organized as a collaboration between NTNU+NAV+HMN collaboration program, the project SustainDiT (Sustainable Digital Transformations), which is part of NTNU Sustainability, and NTNU Digital’s Center for Sustainable ICT, CESICT. The seminar will have both Norwegian and international participants. Presentations and discussions are in both Norwegian and English. Intended audience is practitioners in the public sector, and academics working with digital transformation.

Program

Time	Title	Who	Summary
08:30-09:00	Registration	All
09:00-09:15	Welcome session	Seminar program committee
09:15-09:45	Keynote 1: Digital frontline work – from chronic resource problems to responsive services?	Ida Bring Løberg, NAV	Frontline workers in the public sector are under chronic resource restraints. With great expectations, public sector resorts to digital service provision to solve this problem. The idea is that digital service provision will free up time for meeting vulnerable clients, that is, services responsive to the needs of those who need it the most. However, is this the case? Using experiences from frontline workers in NAV, this presentation addresses implications of digital service provision for frontline workers, the delivered service, and, in the end, social sustainability.
09:45-10:00	Hvordan opplever brukerne digital kommunikasjon med veiledere i Nav?	Anne Wullum Aasback, NTNU	Basert på intervjustudie med brukere av aktivitetsplan.
10:00-10:15	Tech intermediaries – bridgebuilding between IT developers and users	Gina Lindstad, NTNU	One of the most important ways which organizational learning occurs is through implementation of technology. The adaptation process that happens during and after technology implementation is significant because it creates alignment between the technology and the environment it is being introduced into. Coordination between the designers and users of technology is therefore important to find the optimal fit. Coordination activities have to be balanced with the internal team activities. In larger organizations find the concept of “tech intermediaries”, a unit made for bridgebuilding between IT developers and users. We look at how tech intermediaries contribute to coordination between IT developers and user.
10:15-10:30	Digital platforms in the public sector: a literature study using the public value perspective	Syed Sajid Hussain Shah, NTNU	Governments around the world are under pressure for digital transformation to reduce costs and increase organizational efficiency. A digital platform (henceforth called the platform) can help transform the public sector by opening up for citizen participation and co-creation to produce and deliver public services. I present a literature study of public sector platforms and ecosystems using the lens of public value to identify research themes and synthesize a theoretical framework. The literature study investigates issues like the definition of a public sector platform and an ecosystem, the role of the public sector in the ecosystem, the governance model, and the creation of public value.
10:30-10:45	Digital transformation of the patient pathway: ensuring sustainable collaboration	Ilaria Crivellari, NTNU	The digitalization of welfare services is a complex process itself and performing this transformation in a sustainable way is even more demanding. To have sustainable transformations, three moral imperatives need to be followed to the same extent: ensuring social equity, satisfying human needs, and respecting environmental limits. When a citizen needs a long sick-leave, a predefined pathway is to be followed. Many stakeholders interact in this process, such as the healthcare personnel, that includes for example GP, specialized physicians, and psychologists; NAV workers; the employer; and the citizen himself. The focus is on how digital transformation can help in the decisions related to sick leave to grant, at the same time, a simplification and reduction of the workload of social workers in the field and healthcare personnel related to the case, and a high-level service for the citizen, that expects a reduction of waiting time and stress.
10:45-11:00	Coffee break
11:00-11:30	Keynote 2: Hvordan kan digitale brukermøter i NAV skape tillit?	Karl Kristian Larsson, NAV	The Norwegian population, compared with most comparative countries, have a high degree of trust in the government. This trust is the product of several decades of civil servants conducting themselves with professionalism and sincerity in public encounters with citizens. However, a growing number of public encounters are done digitally without the contribution of civil servants and other public sector professionals. How can NAV and other public agencies ensure that trust is preserved as the digitalization of the public sector continues?
11:30-11:45	Fremtidens møteplasser i Nav	Camilla Dahl og Silje Andersen, NAV	Hvordan kan NAV møte brukerne i 2030? Presentasjon av funn og metoder fra en idedugnad med brukere og medarbeidere i NAV.
11:45-12:00	Caseworkers’ participation in early-stage procurement: The case of Child Welfare Services in Norway	Tangni Cunningham Dahl-Jørgensen, NTNU	Procurement is currently a widely adopted approach for acquiring new systems in the public sector. Researchers and government officials have long recognized the benefit of end-user participation in system design and are aware that the early phase of participatory processes defines the boundaries and context of new system designs. However, how user participation is enacted in procurement remains an underexplored topic to date. We focus on the participation of caseworkers in the procurement of a case management system and build on the concept of infrastructuring to shed light on the tendering process as a decisive stage for shaping participation.
12:00-12:15	STUNTH – a cohort study of hospital workers undergoing digital and demographic change	Signe Lohmann Lafrenz, NTNU/St.Olav	The St. Olavs Study – New Technology and Health aim to acquire knowledge about the relationship between work-related factors and health among hospital workers in a time of digital and demographic change. In this talk we will present data collection and some preliminary results.
12:15-13:15	Lunch break
13:15-13:30	Analysis of Scaled Agile Transformation on Social Sustainability of Digital Transformation in Norwegian Public Sector	Morteza Moalagh, NTNU	In this study, the effects of using scaled agile approaches on social sustainability of digital transformation will be reviewed. Its goal is to offer a framework that aids in directing the deployment of agile methodologies in a way that can support the social sustainability of a company. The public domain is more of the focus of this thesis, which tries to evaluate and examine the proposed framework by gathering information from field studies on a few Norwegian government agencies.
13:30-13:45	Digitalized care pathway involving both healthcare and welfare services	Maryam Haghshenas, NTNU	According to the importance of good communication within different actors for providing good services for patients, the project is going to look into the integration of care pathway for patients with long-term and complex pain conditions using a digital technology, where both healthcare and social services are included. The experience of patients, health care professionals and actors from NAV involved in the care pathway will be used. Additionally, the sustainability aspect of application of digital technologies for care pathways will be considered.
13:45-14:45	Group discussions	Based on the topics of the presentations, to be decided.
14:45-15:15	Coffee break
15:15-15:45	Panel discussion	Presentations from parallel sessions and discussion.	For a summary of the seminar and the group discussions see this web page.
15:45-16:00	Evaluation and closure