Despite the health crisis caused by covid-19, it has been an opportunity that has accelerated the digital transformation of businesses and organizations. This pandemic highlighted the essential role that innovation and dematerialization of processes play in various sectors. Several companies, schools and administrations have joined initiatives and projects that reflect an unprecedented industrial and digital transformation. Since then, digital technologies have gained popularity, and have led the way to a large field of new opportunities. For example, the Digital Development Agency (Agence de Développement du Digital : ADD) has launched initiatives in favor of public administrations to support them in remote work such as the digital order office, the electronic mail wicket, the electronic signature book.

Moreover, the health crisis is disrupting all sectors of activity. It is also leading to a faster transition to the digital transformation of sectors that have remained traditional, such as health, public administration or even education and learning. The doubts that the structures had to face in the current situation pushed the economic actors to adopt digital tools very quickly and thus put aside their unwillingness to move forward.

Thereby, the current health conditions has accelerated the use of digital technologies in several sectors such as:

• e-Learning: many schools and universities have used remote learning platforms and videoconferencing tools to ensure educational continuity and avoid dropping out during the period of confinement and continue to use such tools as long as the pandemic has not stopped;
• e-Gov: the use of Information and Communication Technologies by public administrations in order to make public services more accessible to citizens and businesses;
• e-Health: acts of prevention and care performed remotely;
• Industry 4.0: the new generation of connected, robotized and intelligent factories using the systems of data acquisition, processing, and control;
• Libraries and digital archives: the dematerialization and the provision of corpora rich in documents and records via platforms dedicated for different audiences.

How much has Morocco evolved in terms of digitization since the start of the pandemic? Is this acceleration an ephemeral result of the current situation or a lasting achievement? what is the role of innovation in the digital sphere? and how can we capitalize on this experience that is certainly difficult but also rich in innovative practices?

To answer these questions, the School of Information Sciences is organizing a workshop in hybrid mode on 06/17/2021 and 06/18/2021 under the topic " Innovation & Digital Transformation in the era of covid-19 ".

This workshop is an opportunity for researchers and actors of public and private sectors to present and share their projects, experiences, and initiatives in the fields cited below; the list includes, but is not limited to:

• Digitization of business processes and functions;
• e-learning and innovation in the education system;
• Electronic administration and e-services;
• Smart systems and business innovations;
• Document Management System (DMS) and informational heritage;
• Innovation in e-healthcare;
• Governance and information systems;
• Libraries and digital archive management.

        Pr. LAKHDISSI Mouhsine

    FST, Hassan 1er Settat University

To view the Call for Papers:

Submissions to WIDT'21 are done using abstracts of 250 words maximum and 5 keywords, respecting the following template [Abstract submission template], and can be written in English or French.

We invite researchers to contribute by submitting their work via the EasyChair platform:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=widt21

Workshop Days : June 17 & 18, 2021

Abstract Submission Due : May 26, 2021

Notification of Acceptance : May 30, 2021

Registration : June 1-10, 2021

مدرسة علوم المعلومات
Ecole des Sciences de l'Information
School of Information Sciences