The importance of digital transformation in education and distance learning:
There are many benefits to distance learning for all the parties involved: students, teachers, universities, and future employers. However, digital education is also a greener alternative to traditional teaching ways: providing digital learning courses consumes 90% less energy and produces 85% fewer CO2 emissions per person than face-to-face training.¹ Here is how digital transformation is positively impacting the education sector.
1 Source: European Digital Rights Association
The power of collaboration
In the sphere of education, going digital means enriching the way students learn and teachers teach. This enables a more thorough transfer of knowledge at a personalized pace.When learning is digitized, teachers can apply more than one teaching method. They are not limited to lecturing only but can use different resources like videos, images, and audio content.
Most importantly, both teachers and students have access to a lot of information about the educational process at all times. Not only can students more easily track their progress, but they can also chat with other students and find out the information they need right away.
It is no wonder that 43% of US college students found digital study technologies extremely helpful for doing homework², and that 84% of students believe that digital learning technology can improve their education.³
2 https://www.statista.com/statistics/662492/helpfulness-of-digital-study-technologies-usa/
3 https://www.mheducation.com/highered/explore/studytrends.html
Making education more accessible and safe
In 2020, 41% of college students said that their online learning experience was far superior to physical classroom learning.⁴ 2020 was a challenging year, and universities prioritized their students’ and faculty’s safety. We now see that the digital learning experience was perceived superior to physical by some, even when it was implemented so abruptly and without proper preparation.Not only does distance learning enable students and teachers to stay safe, it is more accessible. For one, it allows students with disabilities to participate in educational activities more easily. Secondly, everybody has the flexibility to access studying materials at any time - making it extremely convenient to study at your own pace and at your own time.
4 https://techjury.net/blog/elearning-statistics
No wonder that 82% of students say digital learning technology allows them to spend more time studying through increased accessibility.⁵
5 https://www.mheducation.com/news-media/press-releases/2016-digital-study-trends-survey.html
Preparing students for the jobs of the future
85% of college students feel having used tech in classes or to study has helped to make them a better job candidate.⁶ This is no wonder, since digital skills are sought after in the job market like never before. When participating in distance learning, students are acquiring digital skills by using technologies at hand. These technologies are often mimicking the ones they will use in the business world. Moreover, students are acquiring a better understanding of their own schedule and responsibilities when immersed in online learning. This can help many students to prepare for their future remote and hybrid jobs that also require a lot of independent work.
6 https://www.mheducation.com/news-media/press-releases/2016-workforce-readiness-survey.html
Universities becoming more competitive
Digital transformation in education does not only benefit students, teachers, and future employers. It also has many advantages for universities offering it.For example, universities that incorporate distance learning best practices can hire lecturers from all over the world, similar to remote companies that hire talent from anywhere.
It gives universities the opportunity to offer high-quality education, which can attract more students. Being more competitive can also bring more funding, thus directly profiting universities that successfully implement digital transformation initiatives and enable distance learning.
Enabling distance learning: challenges and opportunities
Enabling distance learning benefits universities. However, higher education institutions face several obstacles when implementing digital transformation initiatives in their rows.
Here are the most prominent challenges universities face when implementing online learning - and our tips on approaching them.
Challenge #1: Adapting to new technologies
The challenge of adapting to new technologies has two aspects. First and foremost, it refers to universities’ complex IT infrastructure that makes it difficult to quickly and efficiently introduce new solutions.Moreover, software customization is often costly and can strain universities’ tight budgets.
That’s why many higher education institutions are turning to open-source software. Not only is it flexible and easier to fit in an existing IT environment, open-source solutions often come with a lighter price tag. The open-source nature of these solutions enables higher education institutions to change it to fit their needs without vendor lock-in.The second part of the challenge of adapting to new technologies refers to the people. Namely, 41% of US teachers say lack of training is the biggest obstacle to increasing the use of educational tech in their classrooms.⁷
Moreover, 70% of public sector employees believe their digital skills are poorer than those of private-sector employees.⁸ The solution? Invest in training. Students will more easily adapt to digital technologies, having grown up surrounded by them. However, that’s not the case for faculty and staff who need additional training to achieve satisfactory digital fluency levels.
7 http://www.theeducators.co/2020/06/30/e-learning-statistics/
8 https://magenest.com/en/digital-transformation-in-education/
Challenge #2: Maintaining data privacy and sovereignty
Data privacy regulations are becoming stronger and are being implemented all over the world. Gartner’s research shows that by the end of 2023, 65% of the world’s population will have its personal data covered under privacy regulations.⁹ GDPR in Europe is a prime example of how laws and regulations impact the use of certain solutions. The financial repercussions for disregarding compliance are telling: there were €158 million worth of GDPR fines issued in 2020 only.¹⁰ That’s why universities need to be mindful of protecting their data privacy. They can do so by:
Introducing or expanding the role of Data Protection Officer
Providing data privacy training to staff and faculty
Acquiring data privacy-mindful solutions (for example, GDPR-compliant).
More and more organizations are opting for full data sovereignty to ensure highest data security standards. Data sovereignty means authority, maintenance, and control of data within jurisdictional boundaries - in other words, having full control over your data. On-premise software deployment is a way to achieve full data sovereignty, so many privacy-conscious organizations opt for such solutions.
Challenge #3: Cybersecurity
Research shows that universities underinvest in their cybersecurity. Yes, higher education institutions don’t have infinite resources, and cybersecurity breaches don’t happen to everyone.
However, when data security breaches do happen, they are very costly, and cyberattacks are rising. More specifically, we saw increased cyberattacks against universities since the abrupt switch to online learning in 2020. The average cost of a cyberattack against universities was $477,000.¹¹
11 https://edscoop.com/bluevoyant-university-cyberattacks-ransomware-report/
Moreover, universities often collaborate with external parties like other higher education institutions or companies. The major challenge they face while doing joint research is protecting collaborative data.This challenge might be the hardest one to solve for universities since it requires a comprehensive strategy on data security.Apart from investing resources to increase their network security, universities must look for security-oriented solutions. These are some of the features to be mindful of:
On-premise deployment: on-prem allows universities to have control over their data, thus protecting them better. 65% of companies that opt for on-prem solutions do so to better protect their data.¹²
12 https://f.hubspotusercontent10.net/hubfs/8554162/The_State_of_On-Prem_Whitepaper.pdf
Make the software user-friendly: Although it’s not a security feature, user friendliness ensures that students and teachers will not resort to other consumer-based software that might not be as secure.
Multi-factor authentication: using mobile apps, email, and text messaging helps to fight the misuse of software at hand.
Open-source software: the source code transparency allows contributors to make security-oriented changes and leads to regular security updates.
When it comes to protecting collaborative data between different universities or universities and businesses, best practices call for intense regulation of data sharing via contracts that specify security policies, data protection responsibilities, technology to be used, and more.
A feature to look at when researching security-oriented collaboration platforms is federation. Federation allows servers to communicate with each other, with no limits to the number of servers connected. This means that users can exchange information and communicate under an umbrella of security practices that have been set up on these servers.
Challenge #4: Resources to acquire and maintain new digital tools
Universities are often underfunded and lack resources to acquire and maintain new digital tools. Luckily, more and more governing bodies understand the need for digital transformation in the education sector.
For example, the EU has issued a Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027)¹³ that includes the “support for the digitalization of teaching methods and pedagogies and the provision of infrastructure required for inclusive and resilient remote learning”.
13 https://education.ec.europa.eu/focus-topics/digital/education-action-plan
Moreover, Germany’s Digital Education Strategy 2025 includes €6.5 billion¹⁴ in funds that schools and universities can use to invest in improving digital education. This includes acquiring new technologies, improving data security, hiring new personnel who will aid with the digital transformation process, and so on.
Since the EU issued an industry-wide action plan, we can expect more countries to recognize the benefits of distance learning for their own economies and provide funds accordingly.
Challenge #5: Student disengagement
When universities and students abruptly switched to online learning in 2020, it created a number of challenges. One of them was a drop in student engagement.
For one, students didn’t know how to use the technologies at hand. Secondly, the online environment takes away from social, non-verbal clues that are present in a traditional classroom.
To deal with these issues, researchers from LSE propose the following:¹⁵
Creation of tutorial videos for online platform and tools
Structuring formal and informal learning and use of VR and other immersive technologies
Breaking the dichotomy between social and classroom learning using collaborative online tools.
Reduced costs
Modifications to the software are sometimes impossible with proprietary software. Even if they are, customization is often very expensive and takes long, with a lot of compromises to make on the way to the final product.
In comparison, open source software can be customized with a lot less resources. This is also one of the most appealing aspects of open source software for public sector organizations that undergo very strict budgeting processes.
Some open source software is even free to use, but most commonly it offers a free version and tiered paid versions for larger users. However, the fully priced versions of open source software are once again cheaper than their proprietary counterparts, especially considering the level of customization that can be achieved.
Open source + on-premise: as secure as it gets
In EU, we’ve seen established software vendors being banned from use due to data privacy and security concerns. For example, both French Ministies and German schools estimated that is too risky to use Microsoft Office packages. Namely, it was discovered that the US Cloud Act, enacted in 2018, empowers US government agencies to request access to customer data from all US-based companies no matter where their servers are located.⁴
In the case of German schools and French ministries, data was stored in a EU-based cloud, as per EU data hosting regulations. However, it still wasn’t secure enough.
This is why the combination of open source with on-premise hosting is one of the best solutions for maximum data privacy and security. Research from Red Hat shows that out of non-SaaS apps, 37% is run on-premise only, while 40% is run hybridly (combination of on-premise and cloud)⁵. This speaks to the popularity of on-premise solutions and not only for highly regulated industries such as government and public sector.
Indeed, the demand for the solutions that are both open source and have the on-premise hosting option has dramatically increased in recent years. In government sector, we’re seeing Sweden making preparations for its entire governmental ecosystem to move towards this unique software model.
⁴ Source: European Digital Rights Association
⁵ Source: Red Hat 2022 Global Tech Outlook
The Swedish case: open source solution in service of public sector
Swedish government is moving its services towards a self-hosted open source model. In the report they issued in late 2021⁶, they have captured a snapshot of the market and identified several solutions that, either individually or in combination, could provide a suitable digital collaboration platform for their public sector organizations.
In the words of the report authors,
“A public-sector organization should not have to spend time and resources on protecting information from a supplier. Instead, it should select an alternative supplier that does not present a risk in terms of the unauthorized dissemination and processing of information.”
In other words, Swedish government wants its agencies to collaborate without the fear of exposing data, or it being taken advantage of.
During 2022, every Swedish government agency will choose one of the vendors that offer chat rooms, video conferencing, kanban boards, whiteboards, and storage services. The chosen solutions will be integrated on an agency-level, but also on inter-agency level, thus allowing efficient internal collaboration as well as external collaboration between agencies.
The Swedish case is a milestone that will hopefully encourage other governments in the EU to recognize the transformative power of open source and provide higher quality of public service to their citizens.
⁶ Source: Digital collaboration platform for the public sector study.
Rocket.Chat: secure open source solution with versatile use cases
Rocket.Chat is a versatile open source solution that government organizations can deploy on-premise or in the cloud. It can be used for several purposes:
Secure team collaboration
Long gone are the days when email was the main channel of digital communication. Nowadays, employees prefer instant messaging solutions that allow them to quickly communicate and collaborate with colleagues or jump on a video call if they need to align synchronously.
Government-related organizations are also undergoing digital transformation. To provide a more effective collaboration to public sector organizations, Rocket.Chat provides a user-friendly messaging platform with nuanced security features.
Interoperability: key for successful collaboration with external stakeholders
Public sector organizations frequently work on joint projects and their employees need to sync and collaborate to deliver the best end-result. However, they don’t necessarily use the same systems for communication.Rocket.Chat’s interoperability feature is crucial in this scenario. Since it also includes federation features, public sector organizations can communicate via Rocket.Chat with external partner organizations and collaborators, independent of the solution they use on their end.
Check out how the Government of British Columbia uses Rocket.Chat to solve their issues 10x faster securely.
It’s much, much easier for us to work with developers from external organizations in Rocket.Chat than it has been in other collaboration platforms. Other platforms purposely separate our developer community. Whereas in Rocket.Chat, everything is open by default.
Citizen support via omnichannel customer service
Public sector organizations that receive citizen inquiries via different channels - such as email, SMS, Twitter, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger - can use Rocket.Chat as a unified platform to provide exceptional quality of public service.
Having all inquiries organized under a single Rocket.Chat umbrella allows organizations to always stay on top of all requests and manage their precious time more efficiently.
Check out how Rocket.Chat is transforming public safety communications in the US.

Exceptional conversational experience via in-app chat
Governments producing apps for public use is not a rarity anymore. For example, several governments issued apps to manage incoming tourists’ vaccination and COVID-19 tests.
To provide an exceptional conversational experience and support citizens, public sector organizations can use Rocket.Chat in-app chat engine. It can be white-labeled to completely match the style of the app. The in-app chat can be integrated with systems and tools that organizations use every day to streamline workflows.

The #1 communications platform for government institutions
Knowing all the benefits of open source solutions, it’s no wonder that so many government-related and public sector organizations choose to implement it and use it.Here at Rocket.Chat, we’ve been happy to assist a number of organizations working with or related to governments in facilitating collaborative best practices.
Rocket.Chat is flexible enough to fit into the complex IT infrastructures of public sector organizations while enabling effective communication between organizations’ employees, their external partners, and citizens.
Find out more about Rocket.Chat solution for government-related businesses or contact our team to see how Rocket.Chat can benefit your organization.