Bridging digital transformation in public health with digital responsibility

Abstract The rapid digitalization of public health systems demands a framework to ensure the responsible implementation of digital technologies. The Digital Responsibility (DR) framework, proposed by Trier et al. (2023), can serve this purpose but requires further contextualization — an objective pursued in this paper. We apply a content analysis approach to map the DR principles and levels to the Public Health Agency Maturity Model (PHAMM), which is widely used in the German public health service (PHS) to assess digital maturity and derive actions for its advancements. By mapping 354 PHAMM criteria to the DR framework, we identified areas for improvement in both models, contextualized DR for the PHS by identifying 16 subthemes, and extended the DR framework. The extended framework was discussed and evaluated in a focus group with nine experts. This process led to complementing the existing DR levels with an inter- and intracorporate relation and introduces an additional DR principle (Security). Moreover, the study draws crosscutting lessons learned.