Transforming Tomorrow: Why Sustainable IT Standards Must Drive Your Business Transformation
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For Australian corporations navigating the complexities of modern business transformation, the integration of sustainability principles is no longer optional—it is a strategic necessity. Technology plays a formidable role in sustainability transformation, beginning within the IT function and infrastructure, then scaling to enable enterprise-level innovation and industry-wide impact.
To lead this change effectively, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) must adopt structured, measurable approaches. This is where tailored Sustainable IT standards come into play, offering the critical path to embedding Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance across your organisation.
Credit www.sustainableit.org
The Strategic Imperative for Sustainable IT
Sustainable IT is defined as the strategic leadership of enterprise technology to minimise negative and maximise positive impacts across the ESG pillars. While technology drives efficiency, IT functions must address significant challenges, including technology’s carbon and e-waste footprints. For instance, global e-waste reached 57 megatons in 2021, and by 2030, this is projected to hit 74 megatons.
Leading this change is squarely the responsibility of IT leadership. As leaders of digital transformation, CIOs/CTOs already possess the relevant strategies (e.g., migration to cloud, consolidation, automation), the tools, and the critical relationships across every business unit.
The benefits of embracing Sustainable IT are substantial, spanning financial stability to enhanced reputation:
Financial Performance: Companies demonstrating consistently high ESG performance achieved 2.6x higher total shareholder return compared to mid-level ESG performers between 2013 and 2020. IT financial value includes cost savings from lower IT energy use and longer hardware/device lifecycles.
Reputational Value: High IT sustainability maturity correlates with significant improvements in brand image (61% of companies reporting improvement) and customer/client satisfaction (56% reporting improvement).
Future Readiness: It ensures readiness for regulatory mandates for disclosure and appeals to key stakeholders, including "ESG investors" and the younger demographic of employees and customers.
Introducing Tailored Sustainable IT Standards
ESG standards provide a consistent way of describing or "disclosing" a company’s current sustainability state to shareholders and regulatory bodies. However, general standards often have gaps when applied directly to enterprise technology.
To empower technology leaders, CIOs have tailored nearly 200 quantitative and qualitative ESG standards—covering topics, metrics, and KPIs—specifically for enterprise IT organisations. These standards provide IT leaders with a uniform foundation on which they can build their transformation action plan.
These tailored standards address critical objectives across the three ESG pillars:
1. Environmental Sustainability
Key goals include achieving carbon-neutral, green IT infrastructure and operations, developing a circular technology lifecycle to eliminate e-waste, and transitioning to renewable energy.
IT’s environmental standards focus on measuring and reducing impact in IT (Function) and by IT (Enterprise enabling):
Energy & Emissions: Tracking technology infrastructure energy consumption (kWh, % renewable), data centre emissions, and promoting the transition to low-carbon intensity cloud.
Waste & Circularity: Driving device and hardware lifecycle circularity (e.g., servers, laptops) through reuse, refurbishment, and recycling, thereby reducing landfill.
Sourcing: Requiring sustainable sourcing of hardware, software, and infrastructure services (like cloud providers), ensuring they meet criteria like ENERGY STAR®, Epeat, or TCO Certified standards.
2. Social Sustainability
Social standards address how technology impacts people, focusing on the Future of Work, equity, and accessibility. IT must manage both the positive impacts (e.g., telemedicine, virtual learning) and negative impacts (e.g., cybersecurity risks from remote work, AI bias).
Key social standards include:
Future of Work: Enabling seamless remote and hybrid work and planning for reskilling and upskilling workers when roles are eliminated or changed by automation and digitalisation.
Inclusion: Ensuring technology accessibility, implementing inclusiveness criteria in systems design, and addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion within the IT workforce and vendor ecosystem.
Health and Safety: Assessing IT products and services for potential negative health impacts (e.g., eyestrain, sedentary use).
3. Governance Sustainability
Governance focuses on responsible management and technology innovation. Sustainable data governance is a critical IT responsibility, ensuring socially responsible, equitable, and secure use of data.
Key governance standards include:
Data Management: Full compliance with data security, privacy, and usage policies. This includes ensuring personal data management is consistent with the expectations of the owners.
AI Ethics: Implementing approaches to identify and reduce bias in AI analytics, conducting ESG risk and impact assessments for innovative technology projects, and balancing transparency, privacy, and security in AI management.
Risk & Resiliency: Incorporating ESG risks into enterprise risk management and ensuring business continuity/resiliency planning for key vendors and value-chain partners.
Where to Begin Your Sustainable IT Journey
For IT, the sustainability journey starts with defining and adopting these standards. If the scope seems overwhelming, it is possible to begin with just a few organisational steps, often starting with environmental initiatives.
To refine priorities, focus on standards with high "materiality"—those important to stakeholders and offering potential business impact. High-impact priorities for rapid visible change include:
IT infrastructure energy and emissions reduction.
Electronic waste reduction.
Business resiliency.
Data privacy, security governance.
Initial steps for IT leaders should include:
Develop a Vision: Define and communicate a vision for a sustainable IT operating model, aligning it with the existing enterprise sustainability strategy.
Define Accountability: Clearly define sustainability responsibility within IT (executive sponsor, team leads, measurement teams).
Baseline Energy: Begin monitoring the energy consumption of major IT assets (like data centres) and the type of energy used (renewable, coal, etc.).
By leveraging these tailored standards, Australian corporations can confidently embed sustainability into the core of their business transformation, driving efficiency, resilience, and long-term value for stakeholders.
References & Resources
IT Standards for Environmental, Social, and Governance Sustainability
TCO Certified / Development [global sustainability certification for IT products]
Electricity Maps [Track real-time and historical electricity data worldwide]