Corporate Digital Responsibility - Corporate Digital Responsibility, CDR Manifesto, Digital Responsibility

The International CDR Manifesto

During 2021, an international group of academics, corporate practitioners and published authors collaborated to aggregate their existing work into a single, international definition that pulls the best from each to build a set of principles to guide you on your Digital Responsibility journey

Definition

Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) is a set of practices and behaviours that help an organisation use data and digital technologies in ways that are perceived as socially, economically, and environmentally responsible.

1. Purpose and Trust

A clear and unambiguous public statement of intent to positively impact both planet and society, in conjunction with clarity of defining purpose. A commitment to drive for strong and responsible digital governance evidenced by, for example, the implementation of a Digital Ethics Board and driving for exceeding and advocating for improved legislation, regulation and ethical guidance in the geographies in which the organisation operates.

Click here for more detail behind this principle.

2. Fair and Equitable Access for All

A commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion in the organisation and extended supply chain, ensuring that resultant products and services are accessible and consumable by all. Furthermore that the employees involved in building, delivering and supporting those products and services are treated responsibly and fairly

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3. Promote Societal Wellbeing

A stronger focus on protecting personal data, supporting improved privacy balanced with identity, addressing digital poverty in access to skills and understanding and protecting all of society from harmful consequences of digital products and services

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4. Consider Economic and Societal Impact

Considering the economic and societal impact of decisions within the organisation. Transparency in regard to organisational use of algorithms and data with shareholders, employees and consumers alike. Fairer share of gains both inside and outside organisations, and minimise economic impact on communities through sustainable automation

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5. Accelerate Progress with Impact Economy

Take steps to improve consumer demand of ecologically and societally better products, support and incubate more cleantech, greentech, organic and low waste supply chain SMEs and invest in sustainable and societal impact initiatives

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6. Creating a Sustainable Planet to Live

Understand and report corporate impact against the UN Sustainable Development Goals or similar. To innovate and go beyond Carbon Negative, to innovate & solve biggest challenges.

Click here for more detail behind this principle.

7. Reduce Tech Impact on Climate and the Environment

Implement an Environmental IT Strategy, understanding consequence of technology, shift energy use to renewables, mitigate and minimise impact and minimise use of offset

Click here for more detail behind this principle.

A New Digital Responsibility

1. Introduction

The use of the term Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) has grown since first regularly appearing in definitions emerging across Europe from around 2018 through to the current day. It has been especially prevalent in the DACH region, with many organisations across Germany and Switzerland actively involved. During the pandemic, it has spread further afield with regular references emerging in countries as far afield as South Korea, China, the US and the rest of Europe.

Many of the published definitions are closely aligned in 80-90% of the definition, though several bring an important additional factor that is clearly worthy of consideration. What they all have in common is a recognition that it is a responsibility of companies to enhance the positive societal impacts of digital and to minimize the negative ones beyond legal obligations.

The goal of this paper, containing an evolution of the definition of CDR, an infographic, and a set of principles, is to aggregate the content in the multiple definitions in a form that could be described as a CDR manifesto – produced in collaboration with a number of those involved in the original production of the concept and unifying the international language around CDR.

The authors (in alphabetical order below) of this collaborative paper include three of the regularly quoted original definitions of CDR, and others regularly in the midst of its ongoing evolution:-

Dr Saskia Dörr (WiseWay, author of Springer book “Corporate Digital Responsibility”)
Tim Frick (Mightybytes and regular author on CDR).
Christopher Joynson (founder CDR definition, Atos)
Oliver Merx (founder of the global CDR LinkedIn group)
Rob Price (founder CDR definition, previously Worldline, now Alchemmy)
Michael Wade (founder CDR definition, International Institute for Management Development – IMD, Lausanne)

2. Why do we need Corporate Digital Responsibility?

The premise of CDR is that digital technologies can be utilised to create positive impacts for all of us. We have clearly seen that during the pandemic. Where would we have been without the ability for significant parts of the workforce being able to work effectively from home using collaboration tools such as Zoom and Teams, connected through high speed broadband links; to do our supermarket shopping online, consult with our doctor over an app or the many more examples. However, the counter to that might be that our privacy is never more threatened, our passwords are increasingly exposed in cyber attacks and data leaks, and targeted fake news and amplified conspiracy theories are threatening democracy. CDR was created out of the hypothesis that corporates had a greater responsibility to create more positive outcomes for society and the planet, and to mitigate the impact of the misuse or abuse of digital technology.

But before we explore CDR in some more detail, it is important to expand on the term, Digital. In fact, just ‘What is Digital?’

2.1 What is Digital

The MCA[1] (in the UK) defined Digital in 2014 as part of their Year of Digital, the essence of which is best captured as “Digital is creating a new capitalism, with new opportunities and new challenges”. At various stages of what we now consider “the Digital Revolution”, Digital has been perceived differently by different types of organisations:

Perhaps first considered as the shift to online, Digital was often viewed as the website, the mobile app, and the domain of the Chief Marketing Officer in their interactions with their customers
Technology businesses then regularly referred to Digital as the advent of SoCloMo – Social Media, Cloud and Mobility. Digital Transformation therefore became often the adoption of those technologies
Meanwhile the rise of the Digital Agencies and the approaches of “born in the web” led to the product development approaches of Agile and DevOps and
Those approaches that led to continuous delivery and agility led to the same principles to be applied across the operating model & processes to enable the business to operate in line with the new ‘digital speed’ of its technology.

Today we consider Digital as the combination of agility and flexibility, that ‘born in the web’ mindset, utilising enabling emerging technologies that create, process and exchange data to deliver products and services to the consumer. Those ‘technologies’ include cloud, mobility, internet-of-things, blockchain, quantum, automation, machine learning & AI and more. The ‘products and services’ can be disruptive, more efficient, cheaper, more easily accessed.

Moreover, the pace of change of those technologies, combined with organisations that operate with more pace in delivery of disruptive or innovative products and services, is such that it has proved difficult for people to keep up – both in the adoption of those products, and in employer and employee’s ability (in traditional businesses) to evolve new skills.

It was this perceived widening digital divide (considered not just as access to broadband connectivity, but as able to access the range of technologies, tools and skills needed) that led to the creation of Corporate Digital Responsibility, at least in regard to the evolution of the Atos/Worldline definition.

However, it is fair to say that the idea evolved from a number of perspectives. From a digital business (especially GAFA) view it might be the emergent need for a better social responsibility of ICT companies since the rise of the Internet. Additionally, you could consider the perspective of jurisdiction that sees new business and societal options with digitalization and the necessity of soft laws (or digital ethics guidance) as addition to regulation (see CDR Initiative of the Federal Agency of Justice and Consumer Protection in Germany). And importantly, from the sustainability perspective it was becoming increasingly obvious that the ecological effects of digital development (for example data centres, crypto algorithms etc.) were ignored for a long time.

[1] Management Consultancies Association (MCA) – Trade association in UK

2.2 The Rise of Corporate Digital Responsibility

The majority of the focus and evolution of CDR has been across the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) region of Europe. This has stemmed from initial interest in German Government (Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection), which was then superceded by the Business Associations, often dominated by the tech sector. There has been broader interest and use of the term CDR in adjacent geographies such as Poland and Italy. Elsewhere, specifically the UK and France, there is a focus on the component parts of CDR (for example, Environmental Responsibility plus Digital Ethics) rather than the holistic vision of CDR itself. In 2021 however, we have seen interest from further afield with Samsung (South Korea) committing to CDR in a statement in January, and articles starting to emerge in China and the US.

Many of these initiatives have tended to be contained in the country of activity. For example, the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) has recently defined CDR as part of the so called “CDR Building Bloxx” activity, yet whilst its members include a number of international businesses, it is very centred on Germany and the employment and economic position in Germany. Similarly, the excellent paper on CDR produced by Ethos Foundation in Switzerland is centred on the relationship between the investment fund and a number of top Swiss (again international) businesses – indeed, it is perhaps also worth mentioned the Swiss Digital Initiative, that whilst it is not badged as CDR, is doing some interesting work around certifying appropriate use of data and focus on security and privacy.

There are some excellent global and regional co-ordinated activities but they tend to be for one of the component parts of CDR, rather than CDR itself. For example, the World Economic Forum has a very strong current focus on Ethical AI (led by Kay Firth-Butterfield) and the UN Environment Programme is doing some sterling work on a global Digital Transformation, also with a key role in the recently launched Coalition of Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES). It is also relevant to note that there are a number of other embryonic adjacent movements or groups that have similar aims to CDR, though do not use the term explicitly – for example Digital with Purpose, and Tech for Good.

The intention of this paper, and the aggregation of the best of the various definitions is therefore as simple as to provide a global perspective of what CDR can be, and how organisations can use it as a holistic framework to describe what they do both within the boundaries of their business, but really importantly, outside their businesses – getting them to think further about the positive impact they can have utilising digital technologies to innovate to solve societies challenges.

2.3 A Starting Canvas

As stated previously, all of the definitions are broadly aligned, and effective of helping a business think about their corporate responsibilities in the context of digital technologies and services. The approach we have taken is to not re-invent, but to layer the best parts of each of the definitions on top of existing principles. In this context we have returned to the original principles of Corporate Responsibility (CR, namely economic, ecological and societal), but have considered them specifically through a digital lens. With CDR the perspectives of CR expanded and includes effect in the digital sphere. There are various suggestions how the digital perspective interacts with the traditional three. In a “quadruple model” the fourth sphere of digital was just added to the three spheres economic, ecological and social.

In a variation of this Michael Wade (see fig. 1 right) proposed a model where the fourth circle – technological – works in essence as a filter for the three as technology (and digital) is interwoven through everything in todays digital world.

We suggest that just adding a fourth dimension alongside the others would not do justice to the far reaching effects of digitalization that forms a counterpart to the physical world. Therefore we suggest, based on work by Dr Saskia Dörr (2021), an integrated CDR model with social, ecological and economical effects that show their impact within the physical and/or the digital world. This highlights that impacts of digital activities do not remain in the digital world and that effects in the digital and physical world influence each other.

The scale of some of the challenges that we face at the moment are such that it is not sufficient to only consider the boundaries of the organisation as the responsibility of Directors to make a difference. For example, whilst it is important that a business acknowledges a responsibility to mitigate its own effect on the environment, the scale of the challenge is that we need many to go beyond that (beyond Net Zero or Carbon Negative) and innovate to create products and services that have a societal or ecological impact above and beyond the impact of the organisation itself.

Furthermore, we could say similar about digital ethics in acknowledging it is one thing to be compliant with GDPR as an organisation, but something altogether different to make a positive impact on the way personal data is managed for society as a whole, for example by advocating for improved legislation or delivering improved products. In summary, we must look explicitly at the external impact as much as ensuring the internal organisational house is in order.

Fig 1. Michael Wade CDR model, published MIT Sloan Review 2020

2.4 Noting the work of Ethos Foundation

It is worth calling out the Ethos definition of CDR, as it is driven from the perspective of someone making investment decisions on behalf of society (pension funds). There are some great points that come from it that warrant being included, the most central of which is a requirement of the Board of Directors to have a public Digital Responsibility Code. Rather than allocate to any particular part of the quadrant, this first guiding principle of the Ethos definition seems central to all.

Related to the existence of the code is the principle to publish that code in a full transparent manner, and not only that but to apply that principle across all use of data and technologies such as AI – in essence, transparency of Explainable AI. They key word here is transparency, and believability of public claims made. With the increasing focus of ESG reporting, and benchmarking looking to drill beyond market hype and digital-washing into reality, then the transparency of adherence to that code will be a key component, and for that reason, we have added transparency to the Economic CDR quadrant.

Ethos Digital Responsibility Expectations, 2020

The Board of Directors must ensure that the company has a Digital Responsibility Code covering the main issues facing the company and weighing their materiality in relation to the sector of activity and the specific features of the company. The Board of Directors is responsible for covering all digital issues and verifying annually that the coverage is relevant. The code should cover at least the following issues:

Governance
Technology monitoring
Cybersecurity
Privacy and data protection
Ethical rules for the use of artificial intelligence (AI)
Social responsibility for the digital transition
Principle of reducing the digital environmental footprint

2.5 The Survey of Digital Wellbeing

As part of the creation of the CDR definition within Atos (and Worldline’s) work, a global survey was conducted in 2017 as to how people felt about technology. This was specifically trying to understand what were the patterns that led to successful adoption and where fear or lack of trust was higher. In essence the results can be summarised as people were most comfortable where products were hugely convenient – simple to use, saved time – or where they had a potential personal health benefit. More broadly, this led to a strong focus in their CDR definition around product accessibility, and a focus on digital wellbeing. In some of the conversations around CDR, the focus is on preventing misuse or inappropriate use of data using digital technologies, but it is important to more generally consider the positive creation of products and solutions that help nudge outcomes in the right direction. For this reason, Digital Wellbeing is included in addition to “user centric, accessible, convenient product design”.

With the climate events dominating the news beyond the pandemic in 2021, it is now clear that it is impossible to separate societal sustainability from planet sustainability. This great emphasis on the environmental aspect of CDR also recognises the acceleration of focus and interest in this area on the back of a revitalised Paris Agreement, COP26 and the push to the realisation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Interestingly this was the gap in the Atos definition, but was represented in most of the other definitions.

2.6 Thinking more about Environment

The original focus of this quadrant in Michael Wade’s definition was firmly focused on the activities within the organisational boundary – namely recycling of waste technology, appropriate disposal and the use of renewable energy, all of which are absolutely key. However, this is a fast developing area and the pandemic has accelerated interest and focus on it in the last few months, helped by a range of new initiatives such as the European Green Deal, signed recently by 26 tech firms.

The first important addition to the internal Environment quadrant is the use of digital technologies (IOT, AI perception such as OCR, NLP etc.) to aggregate data and reporting that enables the creation of real-time dashboards in businesses that enable them to effectively manage any projects through a lens of environmental impact. We have seen this in place with major international organisations that have made big commitments to carbon neutrality, or indeed in some cases carbon negative.

The second set, and building on the principles in the previous section, relate to the use of digital technologies to innovate and create products that have a positive impact on the environment – whether climate change, biodiversity or resource sustainability. In that regard, “Innovate using Digital creating products & services for environmental impact” has been also been adding encapsulating some of the Tech for Good activities, and collaborative innovations seen globally. This acknowledges the work of UN Environment Programme (as part of CODES, and in its own right) to work with communities and business to create products and services around its own massively distributed digital transformation programme.

2.7 Accelerating the need for CDR Implementation

The biggest question for CDR in its embryonic form has been whether it is to remain an academic concept or transition into mass adoption by business. Critical to that is the compelling reason to change – how would it deliver increased revenues, improve margins? In essence, how is the need to change expressed in the context of the economic models we have known for past few decades.

There is undoubtedly change afoot. We have already mentioned Ethos earlier as an example of an organisation that is looking to make investment decisions based on organisations ability to describe their operations in the sustainable impact they make on the world. Indeed, those organisations that are now scoring more highly on ESG are already finding positive consequences, for example cheaper access to capital. Furthermore the impact of low ESG scores is also more obviously seen with reputational impact and difficult of attracting millennial talent.

We are seeing visible debates about big tech taxation and regulation, covered in part in the economic quadrant of Michael Wade’s definition, as was the focus on sustainable and transparent supply chains and considerations in regard to sustainable automation – maintaining a strong focus on evolution of the workforce beyond the immediate business. The suggested addition to this is Social Impact Investment, recognising the recent growth of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) and Development Impact Bonds (DIBs). Whilst these are not necessary always Digitally enabled, there is clearly a role for Digital technologies and Data analytics (used ethically) to make a real difference as the economic landscape continues to evolve.

2.8 Digital at the Heart of Corporate Responsibility

Finally, this also introduces another important build, which we actually propose to add to the centre with the responsibility to share the Digital Responsibility Code, and it is the alignment with the organisations Defining Purpose. Many organisations are in the midst of revisiting and redefining their purpose such that it strengthens the bond between each of their company, their customers, their community and, importantly, their colleagues.

Each party needs to have the belief and TRUST in the implementation of these changes to truly make a difference. We have lived through a decade of various marketing hype curves – cloudwashing, greenwashing and more. Now organisations not only have to say the right thing, but they need to put it into action to ensure that all stakeholders – whether of a public or private sector organisation – see and feel the change, and place their trust in an organisation who has successfully driven their transformation to create a positive impact on the sustainability of our planet and society.

2.9 Other local CDR initiatives of note

A number of CDR definitions and initiatives have already been referred to in the text above. For completeness, the following are also active in local geographies.

CDR Kodex by CDR initiative (Germany)

Nine Principles show the goals of CDR and support companies when choosing measures. They are supplemented by five action fields: Data Handling, education, climate and resource protection, employee engagement and inclusion. The CDR Kodex was developed by the corporate members of the CDR initiative and published in 2021. All members commit to uphold and report on the principles. It is moderated by the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and not only addresses decision makers in economy, politics and society but also consumers.

https://cdr-initiative.de/kodex

References

Cooper, T.; Jade, S. & Wei, K. (2015): Corporate Digital Responsibility. Doing Well by Doing Good, Accenture, https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insight-outlook-doing-well-doing-good (abgerufen: 21. Februar 2020)
Brink, A. & Esselmann, F. (2019): Corporate Digital Responsibility. Ethik für das digitale Kerngeschäft, Prof. Dr. Dr. Alexander Brink und Dr. Frank Esselmann im Interview, in: CSR News, 33(1), 32–35.
Christian Thorun (Institute for Consumer Policy, Germany) referenced the need for CDR in a paper published in 2018. Smart-Data-Begleitforschung (2018): Corporate Digital Responsibility. Fachgruppe „Wirtschaftliche Potenziale & gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz“, Berlin
Christopher Joynson (Atos) & Rob Price (Worldline) jointly defined it in a series of blogs published in 2018, as an output from a global research stream looking at the widening Digital Divide in a Digital Society (https://corporatedigitalresponsibility.co.uk/resources)
Michael Wade (IMD – the Institute for Management Development) defined CDR in a definitive paper published in the MIT Sloan Review in 2020 https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/corporate-responsibility-in-the-digital-era/
Saskia Dörr (2021) Corporate Digital Responsibility. Managing Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability in the Digital Age. Springer: Berlin. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783662638521.
Ethos Foundation, a Swiss Pension Investment Fund, defined CDR from the perspective of investment decision making in 2020
BVDW (supported by PWC Germany) are working on an extensive definition of CDR, due to publish in 2021, “CDR Building Bloxx”
Research on the value drivers of CDR - Esselmann, Golle, Thiel & Brink (2020) Corporate Digital Responsibility. Unternehmerische Verantwortung als Chance für die deutsche Wirtschaft. https://zentrum-digitalisierung.bayern/wp-content/uploads/ZD.B-Positionspapier_Final_web.pdf
Econsense (2021) Blueprint for Implementing Digital Responsibility in Companies https://econsense.de/app/uploads/2020/11/201119_econsense_Blueprint_E.pdf
The relevance of the topic in Germany appeared with the huge feedback on the call for a booksprint – almost 100 authors contributed - Bertelsmann Stiftung (Hrsg.) (2020) Unternehmensverantwortung im digitalen Wandel. Ein Debattenbeitrag zu Corporate Digital Responsibility. https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/de/publikationen/publikation/did/unternehmensverantwortung-im-digitalen-wandel-all-1

There are a number of other movements/initiatives or schemes that have similar objectives to CDR, namely creating more positive outcomes for society & planet using technology and appropriate use of data. In no particular order these include:-

Tech for Good
Digital with Purpose
ForHumanity

Principle 1 - Purpose and Trust

Why is this important?

Digital at the Heart of Corporate Responsibility, protecting reputation & trust in the organisation of employees, customers & shareholders

Back to the Principles

1.1

Facilitate & earn public trust by establishing and adhering to a Digital Responsibility Code that publicly, and transparently, declares position around, for example as described by Ethos Foundation

Governance through a CDR or Digital Ethics Council/ Advisory Board
Technology / Digital monitoring
Cybersecurity – Data / IP Privacy and data protection
Ethical rules understood and applied for use of digital / AI
Social Responsibility awareness for Digital Transformation
Principles of reducing carbon footprint.

1.2

Define & Agree Corporate Purpose and consider alignment to support Social Value and Sustainability in the Digital Age. Build an organisational culture that enables responsible actions of employees and leaders

1.3

Implement Strong Digital Governance, for example a Digital Ethics Board with due consideration to its make up and governance, including accountability and reporting

1.4

Exceed, and Advocate for Stronger Responsible Regulation, by adhering to, advocating for evolution of, and raise visibility of appropriate legal, regulatory and ethical rules per geography & markets (e.g. data/AI), certifications (e.g. security/safety online)

Principle 2 - Fair and Equitable Access for All

Why is this important?

Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion drives a need to engage different stakeholders, like customers and employees, effectively in the use of digital technologies and services

Back to the Principles

2.1

Innovative, Accessible and Inclusive Products & Services

Ensure all parts of society have access to digital technologies (connectivity, tools and know-how)
Ensure that products and services are inclusive by design, user-centric, convenient and accessible design for all
Facilitate improvements in social innovation through digital tools and technologies

2.2

Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Promote diversity and diverse thinking, integrated into product and service design, avoiding tech/AI driven bias exacerbating societal perspectives
Actively avoid discrimination within digital transformation of business

2.3

Responsible Employment Rights

Ensure human and employee rights are maintained with responsible outsourcing of work to the gig economy
Responsible employment rights across (digital) supply chain
Respecting employee rights for privacy and human dignity at the digitalised workplaces

Principle 3 - Promote Societal Wellbeing

Why is this important?

Protect data and personal privacy, empower people to engage and develop skills, and protect from harm to improve reputation and trust.

Back to the Principles

3.1

Implement Strong Privacy

Ensure data privacy protection for employees, customers, citizens and all stakeholders

3.2

Implement Responsible Data Practices

Follow responsible data validation & disposal practices, including transparency of use & processing of external data
Implement responsible cybersecurity protection and response practices
Informing proactively when using tracking, scoring and profiling and giving opportunity to avoid
Refrain from harmful behavioural manipulation by using data, tech and digital tools

3.3

Promoting Digital Maturity Skills

Addressing digital poverty & promoting inclusion (access to digital, access to digital finance)
Promote improvements in societal digital maturity (skills, trust and understanding)

3.4

Promoting Digital Wellbeing

Pursuing socially ethical digital practices – to reduce amplification of ‘fake news’ & inappropriate digital influence (harm and digital wellbeing)
Promoting physical & mental healthy lifestyle, supported or enhanced by digital products or services

Principle 4 - Consider Economic and Societal Impact

Why is this important?

Reputational need to consider the economic and societal impact of decisions within the organisation

Back to the Principles

4.1

Plan for Sustainable & Responsible Automation

Replacing jobs done by humans in a responsible way, consideration of retraining/reskilling programmes
Ensure ethical and unbiased, explainable AI decision making algorithms
Enable employees to understand the ethical dilemma and societal impact of tech and digital transformation through awareness training
Actively engage with employee opinion and feedback in digital transformation, automation and tech implementation

4.2

Transparency with Stakeholders with Verifiable 3rd Party Data and Algorithms

Ensure organisations & consumers understand sources of collected data, where it is, what is done with it, including scoring, profiling, reporting
Understand authenticity and transparency of utilised 3rd party AI algorithms

4.3

Share Digital Economic Benefits with Relevant Stakeholders

Sharing economic benefits of digital work with society, for example through appropriate taxation
Respecting personal data ownership rights, reduce data piracy and enable individual monetization
Promote open data to enable broad innovation by all (including opening Right to Repair)

Principle 5 - Accelerate Progress with Impact Economy

Why is this important?

To accelerate consumer demand of ecologically and societally better products. Incubate more cleantech and invest in sustainable and societal impact initiatives

Back to the Principles

5.1

Invest in Sustainability / Environmental / Impact returns

Look to partner ecosystems across supply chain, engaging (and measuring impact of) ecotech, cleantech digital solutions
Position for growth in environmental markets that align to purpose and positive planet impact

5.2

Use Verifiable Offset

Understand Carbon Credit market and if using offset, look to use verifiable offset or digitally enabled natural carbon sequestration (like e.g. reforestation and afforestation)

5.3

Accelerate & Innovate Sustainable Consumer Behaviours

Use Digital products to enable, for example, price discriminating digital tools that promote sustainable practices
Consideration of economic models that are more conducive to sustainable practices

Principle 6 - Creating a Sustainable Planet to Live

Why is this important?

To move beyond Carbon Zero or Carbon Negative to Planet Positive, to create a more positive impact on the planet than your organizational scope using digital products and services

Back to the Principles

6.1

Report impact of business against 3rd party impact assessments

Promote transparent, sustainable and ethical working practices across the supply chain linked to a recognized sustainability reporting standard such as UN Global Compact, Global Reporting Initiative, SASB, ESG frameworks or BCorp, including digital responsibility practices

6.2

Innovate & Positively Impact Beyond Corporate Boundary

Using Digital technologies or services, look to innovate and create new product lines or business capabilities that tangibly and positively impact

Economic Sustainability - of supply chain, of people, of business
Societal Sustainability – social cohesion, trust and privacy
Environmental Sustainability (climate change, biodiversity, waste, resources)

Introduce Circular Economy principles in Product Design
For example, contribution of data or APIs, or utilization of other technologies with data science of analytics to create new societal & environmental benefits

Principle 7 - Reduce Tech Impact on Climate & Environment

Why is this important?

To mitigate the impact of your organisations technology impact as you head towards Carbon Zero or Carbon Negative and Net Zero

Back to the Principles

7.1

Implement an Environmental IT Strategy

Following responsible recycling practices for digital technologies – target zero waste, promote circular economy
Following responsible disposal practices for digital technologies, including extending tech life span, e.g. of smartphones and using refurbished IT
Design in Environmental considerations in the use of digital technologies – e.g. Sustainable Web Design & IT Strategy

7.2

Measure, Report, Minimise Energy use & move to Renewable Energy

Reduce consumption by measuring & actively reducing Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions using Digital tech

In your data centres, and supply chain data centres, direct and indirect
In your offices & business facilities
In your travel & vehicle fleets
In your decentralised asset base