**1. Introduction**

The aging population structure, declining school-age population, and Digital transformation, recently accelerated by COVID-19 demands that universities prepare new survival measures [1]. Universities seek various means to respond to external environmental changes, such as management and development of human resources and transition to consumer-centered education, as well as digital transformation [2–4].

Digital transformation refers to the act of turning innovation, culture, and systems of organizational structures into a digital basis to respond to various changes caused by digital elements. In a broad sense, digital transformation means "changes related to applying digital technologies to all aspects of human society [5, 6]." Besides digitization of the assets, digital transformation includes the use of digital technologies that enhance the experience of interested parties, employees, and customers [7, 8]. Accordingly, a digital competency, that is, understanding and utilizing digital technologies, is crucial in coping with the digital transformation era and promoting related strategies. On the organizational level, members are required to cultivate digital competency [9, 10]. Digital competency converges on various concepts demanded by the informational and technological environments, such as the Internet, media, information, and digital literacy. Among such concepts, digital literacy is most closely related to digital competency [11, 12]. Beyond the ability to use certain hardware or software, digital literacy embraces the ability to judge the value of the information as well as create new information. It can be understood as a strategic ability for attaining goals [13–16]. If the competency level in digital literacy increases, one can better understand and contribute to the changes in the management strategy of an organization during the digital transformation era. Since digital literacy is also critical for universities, it is necessary for their staff to strengthen their competency from the digital literacy perspective [5].

In the digital transformation era, universities and their administrative staff need to strengthen digital literacy [5], but there is a lack of interest and research on competency development among the administrative staff [17]. The reason is that the administrative staff is considered to play just supportive and assistive roles compared to the faculty and students. Moreover, universities do not share information about human resources due to competition [18, 19].

The purpose of this study is to develop a competency model for the administrative staff of National University Corporation A to increase the competitiveness and improve performance of the universities in the digital transformation era. When developing the competency model, the digital literacy competency that was emphasized earlier will be included, and the process of transforming and reconstructing the competency model for administrative staff at A National University Corporation will be carried out. This change can be seen as a remodeling process that repeats the competency modeling procedure according to the circumstances and purpose. In addition, this study aims to additionally analyze the training needs by job level to improve the utility of the developed competency model. The following three research problems are set. First, confirm the competency required for each job level of the administrative staff of National University Corporation A. and perform the competency remodeling. Second, secure the validity of the competency model derived through internal and external expert reviews. Third, verify the importance of the competency by job levels and differences in the levels of possession through the training needs analysis.
