Synthesis¶
To reduce their environmental and social footprint, IT Departments and IT companies must consider not only their own energy consumption, waste production and direct impacts, but also the ones due to their suppliers and value chain. This is mandatory if they are to respect the Paris Agreement, limit global warming to less than 2 degrees, compared to the pre-industrial world, and prevent pollution transfers. A pollution transfer could be from the transfer of activities, and hence their impacts, to the supply chain, for example. It could also come from the effects of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on water consumption, abiotic resources depletion, soil acidification, ionizing radiation or many other environmental criteria.
To reduce its social and societal footprints, IT Departments and IT companies must pursue fair working conditions in the supply chain, equal access to technologies for all users whatever their circumstances (geographical, intellectual, physical) and respect the privacy of personal data.
The objective of this document is to give a general framework for the evaluation of its stakeholders’ maturity in sustainable IT, aiming to accelerate their awareness and to encourage them to launch action plans consistent with the global IT economic ecosystem. This document sums up 48 open questions covering all aspects of Sustainable IT, and the criteria for evaluating the answers brought by stakeholders.
These criteria are classified in 10 families:
- Governance and Strategy
- Training and competences
- Measuring
- ICT equipment end of use, end of life, e-wastes and circular economy
- Infrastructures
- External infrastructures (cloud and WAN)
- Usage and Procurement
- Contribution to the Sustainable IT ecosystem
- Digital Services
- Societal impacts
This document also proposes a methodology for using this referential and adopting a systemic approach by encouraging discussions with stakeholders and sharing experience and concrete action plans.