Digital Competences for Virtual/Hybrid Hackathons: DigComp 2.1 in Municipal Organization

Abstract

This paper addresses the digital competences necessary for virtual hackathon participation. Specifically, it focuses on the digital competences and their training utilizing DigComp 2.1.-framework as reference. It presents a case study in a Swedish municipality carrying out multi-disciplinary and intra-organizational, hackathons in virtual and hybrid collocation for public sector innovation. The results of performance-based assessment of digital competence areas, competences, and proficiency levels of virtual and hybrid hackathon hacker participants are illustrated. Furthermore, the activities to train those digital competences in two hackathons are portrayed. The results clarify the 17 digital competences necessary for virtual hackathon participation, needed to be verified or trained before the event. Moreover, the results clarify that some of the digital competences are also context dependent, thus affecting the hackathon design. The paper contributes to the literature on digital competence as well as hackathons particularly in virtual and hybrid collocations in municipal organization context.