Smart Department: Designing Digital Applications for Smart Organizations

The changes in the intellectualization of information processes of business and organizations that have occurred in recent years require the adequate transformation of modern educational environment. Information processes in educational organizations have a number of features, which have a significant impact on their automation. This is primarily due to the fact that in them the main “production” process—the learning process, is an information process that is intimately intertwined with the information management processes of the organization. The article analyzes the existing digitalization experience of educational and managerial processes, and the possibility of their integration. The analysis revealed the lack of interconnection between the parameters of the existing university management automation systems and the department-level information processes, which in recent years have endured very significant changes in the direction of complicating and increasing the volume of information. Meanwhile, the educational process and educational process management are integrated at the cathedral level. The university departments rightly classify the number of so-called intellectual organizations, the effective activity of which in modern conditions should be based on the maximum possible using of the capabilities of modern digital technologies. Based on the analysis, a new methodological approach to the formation of a fully functional digitalization system of the chair activity of Russian universities was developed and presented. This approach is considered in the context of the concept of a “smart department”, which is proposed by the authors, that is, a department, whose activities are supported by an integrated automation system for all information processes at the department level. Consideration is given to the concept of “smart department” on the basis of creation of digital applications, which cover all areas of its information activity. The authors have described the conceptual model of a “smart department”, that is, a department whose activities are supported by the totality of modern digital applications.