Episode 45 - Assessing digital sustainability’s maturity with Aiste Rugeviciute and Rob Price

Aiste Rugeviciute and Rob Price join Gaël Duez in E45 of Green IO to discuss digital sustainability maturity and corporate digital responsibility. Aiste is currently both working and studying on the intersection of Tech and sustainability, with the focus of her thesis being Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) strategies and their socio-ecological impacts. She is also the co-author of the hands-on book "B.A.-BA du Numérique Responsable" and has recently developed a CDR maturity matrix. Rob Price is co-founder of the global Corporate Digital Responsibility movement which launched the International CDR Manifesto (2021). Co-founder of Futuria, he is also a fellow podcaster, hosting “A New Digital Responsibility”.

Listen to the full episode here.

Wrap Up Article

Definition of CDR

CDR was a concept developed over 20 years ago, providing a framework for companies relying heavily on digital technology. Aiste defines CDR as an approach in which companies reflect on the way they use digital services and products. It also provides a method to articulate their responsibilities, with the aim of maximizing any positive effects whilst reducing any negative ones. Rob sees CDR as a set of practices and behaviors, using principles or guidelines, that help an organization use data and digital technologies in ways that are perceived as socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. Aligning societal expectations with business expectations is also important, because as society changes, so do businesses. Contextualizing the approach is necessary in order to reach widespread agreement and delivery.

Differing approaches

Rob and Aiste each have an MO for developing CDR, though both believe in a ‘living’, organic, approach, where definitions and methodologies continually evolve to reflect progress and societal demands.

For Rob, the CDR Manifesto and its seven core principles help incorporate more ethical and responsible digital practices within organizations. The first principle, trust and purpose, is at the heart of everything, and which is followed by six other principles: fair and equitable access for all; promote societal well-being; consider economic and societal impact; accelerate impact economy progress; create a sustainable planet to live; and reduce tech’s impact on the climate and the environment.

Aiste has been working on a framework - the CDR Maturity Model - which helps define the scope and level at which an organization should analyze their actions. There are five dimensions: CDR governance; workplace & culture; IT asset management; digital services; and ecosystems. Within these five dimensions are 18 sub dimensions or focus areas, which serve to guide the assessment of the current CDR situation within any organization. There are also six maturity levels, the idea being that an organization can be a complete newcomer to CDR, where no actions are being taken (level 1), moving up to level 6, the innovator, where an organization is considered to be at the forefront of the CDR movement. This matrix aims to structure any approach, helping to reflect on where an organization wants to be in the future, and enabling different stakeholders to be included in the process along the way.

Moving from theory to action

Overall, there are three basic steps to follow. The first step is to answer truthfully the question why an organization wants to implement CDR. Is it a question of societal responsibility, is it a legal requirement, is it in response to demands from shareholders or clients? Only by clarifying why CDR is necessary can an overall approach and related actions be defined. The second step is analysis, assessing the current state of play and giving rise to reflection and leading to a common understanding of where an organization stands at a given point of time. Leading on from this is the third step of putting into place milestones, objectives and priorities, as not everything can be done all at once. The use of smart KPI/OKIs is therefore imperative, making sure that any metrics gathered truly help to monitor and implement change. 

Avoiding pitfalls

It is important to note that each company is different, and each will have a different entry point to CDR - there is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. This is the beauty of a framework or a manifesto with guiding principles as they can help to structure analysis and result in appropriate action. There are trade offs to negotiate, necessitating a multi-dimensional approach. For example, reducing the number of screens per collaborator may reduce the environmental footprint, yet there is a negative impact on the productivity levels of collaborators. Big corporations clearly face significant challenges when implementing change across different countries and cultures, and so transparency and creating a climate of confidence are essential to enable everyone to have a voice. On a much more micro level, it is all too easy to be bogged down in detail, with scores of indicators, so metrics must be chosen carefully. And it pays to be mindful of both business and environmental ecosystems, as, for example, that which is valued by a client is not necessarily valued by collaborators, shareholders, future generations or the planet.

CDR, innovation & sustainability 

Innovation is the buzz word on everyone’s lips, and there is a tendency to hype technology’s role in solving the world's current crises. Yet clearly we must ensure that digital transformations are aligned with sustainable development goals. As Aiste righty says, technology is not neutral; technology itself comes with a negative environmental impact. So we must be judicious in our application of digital technology, applying it to solve specific problems and optimize benefits; it must not exacerbate the crises that we are all facing. For example, powerful models have significantly enhanced our understanding of climate change, yet there is little point in continuing to run large calculations (needing huge infrastructure and running costs) on certain aspects upon which we do not have capacities to act. If innovation was previously defined as invention through commercialization, Rob firmly believes that we need to move on from this mindset, rethink our approach, and define invention as commercialization with a purpose. Tech for good meets good tech - the perfect storm.

Transcript

Intro 00:00

To change, we have to think about how organizations or governments incentivize change in an economy and how that helps businesses to do the things that need to be done better.

Gael Duez 00:25

Hello everyone, welcome to Green IO with Gael Duez - that’s me! In this podcast we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one byte at a time. Twice a month on a Tuesday, our guests from across the globe share insights, tools, and alternative approaches, enabling people within the Tech sector and beyond, to boost Digital Sustainability.

One of my more esteemed peers in Digital Sustainability, and a good friend, who’s now CSO of a large digital tech company used to work before in the garment industry. Sometimes, well quite often, she goes ballistic about the infant level of the digital industry in sustainability compared to other industries. The very idea that digital technology produces products as does the garment industry with clothes and that these products have a footprint both environmental and societal is not that widespread. And when Tech executives become aware of it they often lack the frameworks, the best practices and the metrics to steer the sustainability angle of their company. And answer this pivotal question in an industry, which has just a touch of ego and hubris: how good am I compared with others? And eventually, how good am I with keeping our planet habitable for the human race. Am I being too sarcastic here? Well let’s go back to a more action-drive mindset then. 

Since the beginning of the 20’s, a concept has started to emerge embracing these questions and providing some framework for companies with a significant use of digital technology: the idea of their CDR. Full disclosure, I am using this approach with clients when I do consulting gigs so I might be a bit biased. As usual, question and double check everything that is said in this episode. All the references will be put in the show notes on greenio.tech and on your favorite podcast platform. Transparency and Accessibility remain in the DNA of the Green IO podcast. To deep dive in CDR, I have the pleasure to welcome 2 of the best experts we can find on the topic. 

Aiste Rugeviciute who graduated in both computer sciences and Sustainable Development and Social Business and has worked for several years on the intersection of Tech and sustainability, she co-wrote the hands-on book "B.A.-BA du Numérique Responsable" in French and she is now doing a PhD on Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) strategies and their socio-ecological impacts. 

Rob Price is one of the core members of the international group of academics, corporate practitioners and published authors who collaborated in 2021 to aggregate their existing body of work into a single, international definition of the set of principles supporting Corporate Digital Responsibility. He’s also a fellow podcaster with the “A new responsibility” podcast which covered during 5 seasons the use of CDR in companies. He gave a much listened talk to Green IO London last year. And btw this year Aiste will be the one giving a talk on her CDR Maturity Matrix. So make sure to get your tickets for this great gathering of responsible technologists on September 19th. 

And without further notice, Welcome Aiste and Rob. Thanks a lot for joining Green IO today.

Rob Price 03:55

Thank you.

Aiste Rugeviciute 03:56

Hi, thanks for having us.

Gael Duez 03:59

You're more than welcome, both of you. I have a terribly complicated question to start. Could you define CDR in two sentences maximum?

Aiste Rugeviciute 04:12

Well, it is a complicated question because there is actually no one definition, at least between the academics. Everybody comes up with their own definitions. But in a nutshell, I would say there are two main ideas. So the first idea is, of course, about responsibility. So what are companies' responsibilities with respect to digitalization, or the way they use digitalization? And the second one is trying to maximize the positive effects of digitalization while reducing the negative ones. So that's kind of the two main ideas combined. Rob, what do you think?

Rob Price 04:57

Well, I mean, it goes back to the introduction, really, doesn't it? So in 2021, that was the question we asked ourselves, and we wanted one sentence that described CDR in the context of all the definitions that the variety of us had created at the time. So, I mean, reading that corporate digital responsibility is a set of practices and behaviors that help an organization use data and digital technologies in ways that are perceived as socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. I think the key thing for us was, at the time, trying to think of something that provided a framework and guidance to help organizations be aware of the consequential impact of the things that they were doing. And no doubt, through the conversation, we'll talk more about finding the right balance in terms of framework versus measurement criteria versus a method, if you like, in terms of organizations doing those things.

Aiste Rugeviciute 05:57

I think also one of the key things, what Rob just said, it's about the perceived value. What's in line with the so-called reference points in the society. That's kind of a key thing when corporations, organizations think in general about their responsibilities, and when it comes to digitalization, aligning with societal social expectations and all the idea, you know, if it's contributing to reducing climate change or any other negative impact, it's all about in line with what right? In line with what expectations and whose expectations. That's where the question of responsibility comes in place.

Rob Price 06:48

And can I build on that very briefly, which is, I'm very conscious of talking about CDR in multiple countries around the world. I think it's very difficult to be really tightly defined, because you have to be conscious that different countries, different political systems, different cultures, there would be pushback if you kind of introduced CDR as a mechanism that you had to follow. Literally. It's important to be conscious of the environment in which you're asking organizations and governments to think about the way in which they operate. Even if they take some of those aspects, that's better than all of those or none of those.

Gael Duez 07:31

So it's really a question of contextualizing the approach, and still we reach some kind of agreement around the world and I guess some principles, some guidelines, as both of you mentioned. Could you maybe elaborate what are the main guidelines, the main items that have reached some sort of consensus that, yes, we should pay attention to this aspect and this aspect and this aspect.

Rob Price 08:02

So, in a sense, the blank sheet of paper that we did start with in the past was probably between about 2016 and 2020. A number of definitions of CDR did appear. Some of those were written from business points of view, or government points of view, or academic points of view. But when we did an analysis of them, I would say that 80% of them were pretty similar. Maybe some were focused more around sustainability, some were more focused around trust and inclusion, but 80% was common. And the purpose of the work that we did at that time, with all of those parties bringing together those definitions, was to try and find a common framework that actually was inclusive of everything. So we defined a framework of three intersecting circles, which gave us seven principles. If you think of each of those sections, at the heart of everything was trust and purpose was beginning to be talked about more commonly. So, purpose and trust, fair and equitable access for all. So that's around equity, diversity, inclusion, and more societal well being. Thinking about the impact on people, one of the things that I almost enjoy is when I'm talking to organizations asking if their products and services are predicated on addiction to drive advertising rates, it's always an uncomfortable question. But nonetheless, thinking about the impact on people, considering some of the economic impact, I think is interesting. The fourth principle, economic and societal impact, and probably one of the hard ones. But it's beginning to think about some of the things around algorithms, fair share of outcomes, of benefits, the way in which you value things that you're delivering through digital technologies. Talk about the impact economy in principle five. So, thinking around, or beginning to think about that intersection with the economic and the sustainable side of things, and goes into more detail about supply chain and green tech, and some of the ways in which you can use digital services to directly impact, innovate around sustainability. And the final two, very much focused around sustainability. I'll start with seven. Seven, reducing the tech impact on the climate. You're thinking about what is happening with my data centers. Am I using renewable energy? Is it really renewable energy? Etcetera? And then six, we talked very briefly at the start around innovation, thinking about how I can use these technologies to innovate and solve the world's biggest problems, especially around sustainability. So I think this is a really important one. I want to explore it later. We talk a lot around impact of AI, for example, which clearly has massive energy use, massive water use, in terms of data centers. That's something to measure principle seven. But it's really important to think about principle six in terms of how I can use that technology to create positive impact and benefit on those very things that I'm worried about negatively impacting. And it's a balanced scale. So those are the seven principles. They go into far more detail through the manifesto. There have been other definitions that have emerged since, but I can track them all back to those seven principles. I haven't yet seen something appear that's new, a new concept that doesn't fit into that framework. And of course, we do continue to look at those definitions to determine how we continue to evolve, because I don't think any of us said when we created this back in 21, right. That's it. We've cracked it. Nobody could ever improve on that. It's always evolving, always a living thing, and then it's how people bring that to life, which is probably a perfect position to hand over to Aiste, in terms of the work that you've been doing.

Aiste Rugeviciute 12:05

Yeah. If I might just add or more generalize. So those seven principles, they are a little bit in more detail, but if we take a step back, basically, we can summarize that it's about the environmental and social side. So we have both sides, and that's what Rob was talking about. Right. So there are social, societal questions and there are environmental questions at the same place. Why I'm underlying it, because sometimes especially, I don't know why, especially in Germany, when they used to speak about corporate digital responsibilities, they completely ignored, or they tend to ignore the environmental side. So they tend to look only on the social, societal side and especially concentrate on the data questions. Now, it's shifting a little bit, but at the beginning, I remember when I was reading it, I was surprised to find it because it was completely the other way around. In France, everybody, whenever they were talking, they were talking only about environmental questions. And the social societal questions were put aside and that was being dealt with by more, way more engaged people or very niche, niche people in certain NGOs. Currently, I can see that the discourse is becoming more balanced, which is nice. So it takes into account two sides. So as I said, the environmental and social, societal side. But it's also the question of technologies perceived as a solution or as a problem. So that's we have both technology or digitalization. So we have to generalize two dimensions. So there is one environmental, social, societal side, and then is it good or bad, or again, it should be balanced discourse, but that's the attitude as well.

Gael Duez 14:09

And I have one small question just to clarify. The principle number seven, which is the impact on. Rob, you mentioned impact on climate. Is it only climate or is it all kind of environmental footprint?

Rob Price 14:25

Yeah, no, it's reduced tech. Impact on climate and the environment is the actual words that it says. So it is that consequential impact on everything that you have directly or in the supply chain, on the climate and the environment, planet, etcetera. And I think I wanted to just add something to the thing, the description ack, because it is absolutely about people, communities, society, planet in its entirety. I don't want to forget what I think is probably the hardest part of it to think about sometimes, which is the economic kind of angle, if it changes. We have to think about how organizations or governments incentivize change in an economy, in their geography, in their region of responsibility, if you like, and how that helps businesses to do the things that need to be done better, whether through incentive or whether through regulation. So it's that intersection of all aspects of that. I think it's complex. It's not easy. I mean, we've seen that over the past few years. Many organizations that I speak to, they're not trying to solve everything. At the same time, that's not realistic. It's about understanding the consequence of the things they're doing and honing in on some things that would make a difference, that are important because it positively impacts what they're doing or the way in which they're seen in the market, the respect they're given, if you like, the ability to better place product or service because of those things that they're doing. So it is a finely tuned thing engine that you need to kind of understand how we can nudge it in the right direction to be better in terms of the impact it has on the environment and everything around that. If we were talking seven for example.

Gael Duez 16:26

And now that we kind of lay the ground with the main concepts and the subtle equilibrium between them in the intersection and the kind of systemic interaction that we can see between the seven of them. If I'm listening to this episode, and I'm convinced that, ooh, this framework sounds very interesting, how do I go from the academic and conceptual approach that helps me to better understand what I should pay attention to, to something a bit more concrete for me or actionable for me? And my main question actually will be, Aiste, do you believe that the CDF principles can become actionable?

Aiste Rugeviciute 17:12

I would very much hope so.

Aiste Rugeviciute 17:17

There are different steps before they become concretely actionable. Right. So the first question is, I think to ask, why do you want to do that? And then to ask, what do you want to do? So why? I think it's an important question, which, especially in the organization corporation environment, sometimes it's forgotten by the practitioners and then they are being asked by their managers, you know, and they're like, yeah, but why? What's the purpose? Right. So the question why is very important because most of the time the response is money, is to make profit, to respond to the stakeholders. Right, sorry, shareholders actually. But beyond that, we have other requirements. And that's where I come back to the same notion of responsibility. So the why could be because there are legal requirements, there are risks associated, there are opportunities, there are myriad of stakeholders who suddenly have shifted expectations. So your direct clients, it might be your B2B clients, right? It might be the societal legitimacy for you to stay active in a region, in a state, in a country. It might be simple because you want to benchmark yourself with others, so there are reputational damages, et cetera, et cetera. So the first question is, actually why do you want to do that? Is it because you want to go back to reduce risks, take some opportunity, go beyond your legal requirements and so on. Once you kind of clarify the idea why you want to engage in the CDR, it's going to be way easier going forward to structure your actions and approach towards these guidelines. So let's imagine that you are B Corp, for example, and your idea that you want to do CDR because you want actually to contribute to creating a better society. And you consider that yourself as an organization corporation. That's one of your responsibilities.

Gael Duez 19:55

By B Corp, you mean the label that some companies get.

Aiste Rugeviciute 20:00

Yeah, sorry, I put the label because I know that in the US, when you get a B Corp label, it's much easier to act in line with societal expectations, and not only with your shareholders, because in the US there's a lot of shareholder pressure to get profits, monetary profits. But once you have a B Corp label, they change status in their corporation, legal, something with legal things that in that case, corporations are expected or are allowed way more freedom in order to act in accordance with societal expectations.

Gael Duez 20:48

Thanks for the clarification. And let's go back to what you were saying previously.

Aiste Rugeviciute 20:55

Yes. So once the company decides why they want to do that, the next stage is to understand where they are now, right? So maybe you are already doing very well and your corporate digital responsibilities. So once you clarify your responsibilities, the question is, okay, what is our current state? And once we evaluate the current state, once we reflect on what we are doing now, then we can look at how we can improve ourselves, where we can go in order to go to our objectives as well. A question is, objectives, is it a continuous objective? Is it very concrete that you want to, I don't know, reduce your CO2 consumption by your information systems, or you want to reduce the digital divide in the society? So digital divide in the society, you know, you can have very concrete milestones, but it's a continuous action, right? It's not going to be at some point completely achieved over. So that's basically the three steps. So the first question is why you want to do it. Second one is analysis, understanding where you are now. And the third one is putting the milestones, objectives, priorities. Because as Rob mentioned, you can't do everything at the same time, especially as an organization, you have so many things on your plate. So, you know, you have those seven principles which Rob mentioned, but between the seven principles, maybe some of them have higher priority because of where you work, because of your industry, because of your stakeholders, because of the whole context.

Rob Price 22:42

Completely agree with that. And just, it's a really important point, I don't think, when everyone who fed into that work was never saying there was an equal balance, or needed to be equal investment to address and mitigate each of those separate principles. It's a framework, and the framework is then applied to the organization. I think very few times has an organization ever come to me and said, we've decided we want to implement CDR, how do we do that? Most times it will be they're worried about reputational damage, or they know that they need to improve something around their impact on the environment, or how do they get trust, because they're worried about reputational damage. So it's more around applying it as a framework to help that organization resolve the concern. Or maybe there's been an incident that's highlighted a problem that is perceived across that organization, and it's how they begin to find a pathway to make an improvement that improves the thing that they're concerned about.

Aiste Rugeviciute 23:52

Always some kind of entry point towards that CDR, as Rob said. So it might be reputational, it might be very often a regulation, currently at least what we observe in France. So you have regulations which ask you to reduce your electricity consumption, energy consumption, and reduce your CO2. So that's an entry point. So companies say, oh, I need to reduce my CO2 somehow. So let's try to find all possible leverages. And then when they start looking and they say, okay, well, I might reduce my CO2, for example, or environmental footprint by reducing the number of screens we have per collaborator. So my overall footprint, environmental footprint is going to go reduced, but then that's going to affect productivity levels of my collaborators. So wait a second, that's kind of related to something else, right? And then it might still mean, oh, it's very complicated, the digitalization as a problem itself, it's a systematic problem, and there are different impacts which are very much linked with each other and they're not necessarily going in the same direction. If you reduce one, it can be at the cost of the other. And I think that's where the structured approach of CDR, reflecting on it, allows organizations to take into consideration more things which are more important to them and their stakeholders and the challenges they are trying to respond to.

Gael Duez 25:29

Rob Aiste just shared a very concrete example on this kind of trade off and multidimensional approach. Could you share an example of a client? You can name it or not. You might be under an NDA that started with you. A journey, I would say, toward CDR, and to see the few steps that were taken and how a bit more concretely than some actions were taken.

Rob Price 25:58

I'll use a couple of examples that are not my clients, but they're well discussed, well documented, and in the public domain, if that works, which is probably, and they're both, well, both international organizations. So the first one is Merck and the work of Dr. Jean Enno Charton, who's head of bioethics and digital ethics at Merck. And I think, why do I start with that? A large organization, I think 60,000 people, something of that order around the world, but working in a space that's clearly got strong insight around regulation and controls because of the nature of what they do already. So there's almost a lot they would be, I think, one of the first types of organizations to start thinking about broader CDR and digital ethics in the wider round. And therefore they've focused in and put people and built a small team to build out a framework that takes the best in terms of some of the guidance that's around and early thinking around digital ethics boards and mechanisms and frameworks, and created something that they believe is right in their organization. And I've seen that build and progress. I've presented with Jean Enno in the past, and it is a very thorough process that they've gone through. The last conversation I had with him was interesting because having got that framework in place, that's right for them, it's then how do you communicate it across multiple countries, thousands of people, and effectively get that complete change on boarded and maybe enabling people to say, hey, this, this thing that I've spotted over here, the other side of the world, is something that's different. And maybe that's my introduction to the leader and the work that they did, which again, is one of the early pieces of work, as far as I was concerned, around CDR and led by Jakob Versner. And again, he put in place an explicit CDR. They had CDR principles that they defined for them. I think there were 14 separate areas that they identified. It was driven around digital transformation. So their starting point was every project that has a business case to progress anywhere across the business, we're going to interject, and this is the framework by which we'll analyze the consequential impact and look across the supply chain, very focused around sustainability and local community impact in terms of the societies, the farms, kind of in whichever countries, in whichever parts of the supply chain. And one of the things that I loved about that was that whistleblowing aspect. It was saying, look, there is no problem with being able to say, hey, I've spotted something we need to look at this. And I think that's such an important part of culture and maybe going back to the early conversation of transparency, giving people the confidence in an organization to feel that they have a voice. And I know we've put in this kind of marketing kind of brochure that we're net zero and compliant, but actually kind of, actually the proof points that we think we're quoting aren't quite right. I think it's important for people to be able to say that. So, I mean, there are many other organizations and much work that's been done, but I think both of those two examples are the ones that I'd give as well established on their journey using CDR and digital principles and continuing to evolve and build out over the last several years, rather than somebody just starting today.

Aiste Rugeviciute 30:05

If you are a smaller company, if you do not have 40,000 people and a lot of experts who can contribute with their knowledge and plan how CDR is relevant for you, that's a different challenge, right? For the smaller companies when they want to do something, but they don't know how to get going there. And currently, unfortunately, we are lacking tools or there's not that many frameworks which can provide. I emphasize a structured approach because let's be honest, people like to be structured. You know, they like to think in terms of some kind of systems and being clear about the steps which they need to do in order to get to the next stage.

Gael Duez 30:54

As you said, in a big company, you can indulge yourself to have a dedicated team working on this topic and elaborating fine tuned principles, thinking about how to deploy it, and bringing the leaders. But if you're a medium sized company, mostly it's a one person show most of the time and it's not even a full time job. So having a structured approach will definitely help. And this is exactly why I was very much interested in your maturity model. So the floor is entirely yours now to talk about it.

Aiste Rugeviciute 31:32

Yes. So CDR maturity models. So it's a proposition. It's not a normative thing, but it's a proposition which is a result of academic collaboration and work with different people, different organizations. And thank you, Gael and Rob, you were part of that for all the disclosure, as much as there were others around. In total, I would say 30 people who were involved in contributing with their knowledge, ideas, giving feedback at the different stages. So the maturity model, what I'm talking about, it's fully available online. There's an academic paper I still need to write, actually a more down to earth paper, practical explaining, because I understand that academic papers are not very easily readable by most people, especially those who want to go just quickly and apply it. But the idea of this CDR maturity model is actually very simple. It's a model which allows at the current stage, to look into the scope or help to define the scope at which an organization should look in order to analyze their CDR strategy or analyze their actions, currently, actions being taken inside of the organization. The model, as I said, currently is descriptive, so it's not very normative. It does have six maturity levels. So the idea is that you go from nothing at all. There are no actions being taken up to the six, which if you're exceeding, you are the innovator. You are at the front of this whole CDR movement. There are five dimensions, and within five dimensions we have 18 sub dimensions or 18 focus areas. So we have CDR governance that kind of stands itself clear and underlying there are three sub dimensions. And to be honest, CDR governance, it was one of the most easier dimensions to get consensus on. Almost everybody, all the participants, you know, they were, we do need that. We need actions, rules against the CDR, governments and strategy and all the planning. So that's the first dimension. The second dimension is the ecosystems, which means that as an organization, you should be doing something to contribute to the wider discussions of CDR or in general, digital sustainability. It could be through your relationships with your suppliers, it could be through participation in different external think tanks, groups, open source projects, etcetera. Then we have a workplace and culture. So that digitalization is implying, well, very rarely we will have an organization currently without technology in place, without having their collaborators being exposed to technology, and collaborators can be empowered with the technology. So one of the examples, you know, generative AI, it has a lot of potential to empower people, but it also comes with risks. So that's the whole coming back to the principles that technology can bring positive and negative impact. So I have a workplace and culture, you know, at what point people recognize the risks and opportunities and do they know how to act upon them? Then the fourth one is digital services or solutions. So it's all about dev teams. So internally, what kind of applications we're using, how we're developing, what are the processes in place, if it's relevant for a given organization. And then the fifth one, which is the most difficult, I would say, and this one still needs to be, I think, further developed, is infrastructure or IT assets. So everybody agrees that we do need to think about how we are dealing with data centers. What about our equipment? So IT assets are very much thinking about concrete hardware. But, and that's where the more complicated discussions. Cloud, for example, where does that fit in? Is it fitting in your infrastructure? Is it a more digital solution? Or is it an ecosystem? Because it's actually your provider? Right? So currently it's put in the model. It's under infrastructure, but the model is supposed to be a living model. So the model is there helping, hopefully helping practitioners, helping academics to structure the conversations about CDR. What's the scope? How do we evaluate the current state of our actions, in what areas? So they can be called capability areas. But we don't really give in to that model. We don't really give advice on how to reach the next level. So that would be a more normative model. So I hope that somebody will take it, you know, and as I said, it's a living model. It's supposed to be criticized, it's supposed to be, you know, people should hopefully engage with that model, propose next steps, evolutions, how we can apply it in order to plan the strategies more effectively.

Gael Duez 37:45

Okay, thanks a lot. And I must admit that I'm happy that the cloud was kept in infrastructure because I was a strong advocate of it and I had the opportunity to use it with a client. And actually I was kind of exactly what you've described. It's not necessarily super normative, but it was at the very early stage of consulting on green IT strategy. That was how it was labeled. And I remember I needed something to provide them structured feedback on the, I think it was 20 or 30 interviews I ran with their key actors. And it was pretty useful just to drop the visual representation and say, you know, as far as I understood with those discussions, here is where the main impacts are today. So it makes total sense because you're building digital services to pay attention here and here and that, etcetera. And it was a very loose assessment. It was not super structured with the metrics, etcetera. But still, it went straight to the point with my clients and the executives, like, okay, we got the big picture and then let's investigate a bit more on it. Which actually leads me to another aspect that both of you, you've been advocating quite a lot, is talking versus acting. I think it's very easy to get lost with a high level of conceptualization. And the CDR approach can help actually to get lost somehow if you deep dive into the details and you say, okay, and we should structure like this, and then create a substructure and then another substructure, and for each substructure we should get metrics and goals, etc, etcetera. And like ten years later, you've got a beautiful paper, maybe a white paper or an academic paper, but not that much action being done. And I know that both of you have got strong opinions about it. Maybe, Rob, you wanted to start, like, how do you use the CDR principles and the CDR approach to literally drive actions rather than discussion?

Rob Price 39:48

I think it's fascinating to actually kind of look at what is different, what is happening around the world and to understand relatively kind of the way in which change happens. I mean, the thing that I would say is organizations love to measure things. I mean, can they love to measure things from a financial point of view. But actually just over the last 20 years, I think many organizations, unless you can measure it, you can't possibly then do anything to change it. So I think it's really important to have some sort of model that enables organizations to assess where they might be. I just don't think that the answer is that everything needs to be 100. It comes back to choosing where to make the impact, because you've seen an assessment and a chart that suggests that there's weaknesses in certain areas and then for what you do about them, if I can talk briefly about the approach that I see in Switzerland. So Ethos, who were kind of involved in one of the early definitions back in 2020, I mean, they started measuring the top hundred or whatever number it is of Swiss businesses on a CDR index that they've defined. And of course, the first time they did it, everyone scored appallingly because it was a new concept. It wasn't the way that they'd been managing their business, if you like, but when somebody with a voice, and in the Ethos case, because of their involvement in pension funds and they've got a financial voice, if you like, in Switzerland, then organizations then think, well, we don't want to be scoring so badly next time, so how can we do some things to ensure that the score is better? 

So the first point is, measurement's key because that's what organizations get. Understanding the influence for change, whether it's government regulation, whether it's consumer behavior, whether it's somebody who's got an involvement in the investment decisions, in your long term sustainability as an organization, Ethos, as an example, there are different patterns as to why people choose to change, but then the question is, what do you do? And the answer in terms of what you do is in many cases do the things that are in the discrete area. I mean, if we're talking about the technology in a data center or in cloud CDR isn't inventing some different path that changes what you do? I mean, that's straightforward digital transformation. It's just trying to shine a light on is it being done in the right way? And I'm sure if, I mean, Gael, I remember Mark's session at the conference last year where he was talking about what is your true energy source? So it's about shining a light on you might have thought you were doing things in a way, but had you considered X, Y and Z? Because they're negative, consequential impacts that you just weren't thinking about, because you were just looking at it through the lens of head of IT, or head of compliance or GDPR, legal perspective, whichever one it is. But in each of those areas, there are things that can be done. So I almost see CDR as a pane of glass that you put across your organization that enables you to think about all that in connectivity between the things that are being done. Because what I see in organizations is people don't do that. People focus on the thing that they are responsible for, they know about, their passion is about, rather than that holistic view.

Aiste Rugeviciute 43:35

And I think that holistic view is also coming to the obsession with the measurement or the lack of holistic view is obsession with a measurement. Well, you gave a lot of different cultural examples, Rob. I come from France, or my current experience is very much in France, and here the measurement is very much obsessed, being a thing of people involved in IT. And I think it's almost a characteristic trait, you know, oh, we can measure how much cpu usage is this, we can measure how much this code is more effective than the other code. And all that measurement ends up being some kind of performance indicator, right? We can express the measurement in terms of money, we can express measurement in terms of energy consumption, in terms of maybe how many people we trained on CDR issues. But what actual value do those performances generate? That's the question which is often missing from the discussion. And I think that's exactly when you talk about the holistic view, we often forget that measurement or performance is not equal to the value. And what exactly we're talking to whom, you know, the value. So the value to the collaborators, the value to the future generations, value to your clients or your shareholders is not necessarily the same either.

Rob Price 45:11

I had a conversation a couple of years ago with an initiative that had put a framework and measurement in place. It wasn't a CDR, but it was very close to it. And I asked the question of how it is actually measured then? And the answer was a four month audit. And an organization is not going to do that as in what we're trying to do here. We're trying to impact the planet. We want every business, every organization, every government to be conscious about the way in which they use digital technologies. It can't be complex for every organization if we want everybody to do it, to do it. So how can we use it? I mean, I'm going to go back, maybe I am wearing my technologist hat here at this point, but finding ways to automate the measurement of those things that we're looking to assess. So that something can be done almost immediately with confidence as opposed to kind of misreporting, I think is critical to any of these succeeding.

Gael Duez 46:20

And is it also a question of accepting proxy metrics instead of final metrics?

Aiste Rugeviciute 46:27

This is the key, you know, to what granularity you need to measure things, right? Because you can get so obsessed and so you know what you're going to do with 400 KPI's. At the end of the day, you can measure very precisely how, how much of the resources your code uses. But if you do know that your code is creating, I don't know, negative impacts or creating addiction on a larger scale, well, all those metrics, they're not going to help you to actually make an impact or achieve something different, right? So I think sometimes we forget that experts or people working in the company can very quickly and for a pretty low price, I would say evaluate or estimate the impacts themselves. You know, they can. You just, you do need to provide some certain framework, you do need some certain performance indicators because otherwise people love it, you know, and that's how they measure the success of their company. So it could be a proxy used as money is often used as a proxy for any kind of indicators. But in order to act, well, you need to know priorities, you need to know the magnitude of the problem, but you don't need to know the exact numbers. If you know that you're using thousands of computers, but you don't develop or, you know, your website is just very rarely used, but clearly that the impact is more of your hardware, of the usage of the computers, instead of concentrating on eco design of your website. If it's not used by anybody or if it doesn't bring a lot of value, neither to your collaborators nor to your clients. And you don't need a very precise indicator for these to take action in this respect.

Gael Duez 48:30

That's why I love using the OKR framework because I think it sets two different levels and I use it almost all the time in sustainability consulting. Remember, what are the goals? Like the kind of medium term aspirational goals and this is really what you want to do. And then, yeah, well, you've got key results, but you can try to track them over a longer period to see if you're aiming in the right direction. But first have several of them, because unambitious goals usually should be measured in several different ways. And not, please do not use a north star, that is the worst possible thing to do, like having just one metric to understand the world, how stupid this is. And then and then also acknowledge, exactly as you did Aiste that, yeah, at some point we might drop a metric to keep another one and not end up with 20 or 30 different key results or KPI, to try to understand actually the real true goal that we have. We could be reducing carbons, we could be reducing water consumption, we could be having a positive impact on some kind of very significant social issues, etcetera, etcetera. But yeah, the question of measuring, and I know that it's especially true in France, but to be honest, it's quite also a very strong cultural trait in the US as well. And they love measurement. Just watch a basketball game and you will have statistics on everything. I'd like to drift a bit away from the implementation itself of CDR and to put on the table the topic of innovation. Because if we go back to the definitions that both of you gave at the very beginning, it was really the definition of CDR, I mean, it was really this idea of trade off that we need to know how much we impact the world, to know how much good net we bring to the world, and not just saying we're saving the world. So let us build ten data centers per week. But that's connected also with the fact that most of the time, with digitalization comes some sort of innovation. So what would be your stance on innovation and sustainability? Are they opposite most of the time opposite or are they complementary or is it a bit more complex?

Rob Price 51:03

I think something that a number of us were involved in, which was the Codes Initiative and the 22 report global action plan for a sustainable planet in the digital age. And the very simple part of that was it talked about three shifts that were important. I think the thing that was so important to me in the code conversations was that there was such synergy between everything that people were talking about there and CDR. It wasn't called CDR. I mean, CDR is in the report, but actually the conversations were the same and the three shifts put the enablers in place. So collect the data, collect the information, understand the impacts that we're going to be having. Protecting. Second, protect from harms, mitigate negative effects. Third one was to innovate to solve the world's biggest problems. In essence, those were the three things. Now, why have I said that, organizations, in my experience, don't like being told not to do something, and when they are told not to do something, then they don't want to spend any money on not doing that thing or to do something in a way that they're supposed to, as opposed to the way that they do do. And it comes back to if your model is based on addiction to maximize advertising revenue, because that's your entire kind of way in which you operate and live, then you're not going to suddenly stop that, are you? I mean, it's just not going to be there. So I think one of the things I hear a lot at the moment, and I'm firmly at the heart of the generative AI world and using those technologies is people focused around obsessing about quite recently harms, native facts. It is just doing things not very helpful or impacting people's jobs, etcetera, but forgetting about, because they obsess about that, forgetting about the potential power of those technologies, generative AI, AI machine learning, data science, etc, to solve the world's biggest problem. And we need that. The world has lots of problems at the moment. I mean, it's not just climate change, but finding a way to, I mean, just aging demographics is going to be a problem in terms of long term sustainability of organizations. I mean, sustainability in the largest sense. People can't get access to the people they need, etcetera. So we have to innovate. We need to innovate with a very conscious focus around minimizing negative effects and being aware of harms and all those things. But let's try and focus on positive impact. And I know from experience, impact measuring impact on people and communities is notoriously difficult to do. But let's be conscious of those things and absolutely focus on innovating because we have to. But with that consciousness about doing it in the right way, consistent with regulations, consistent in terms of, or thinking about the impact on people. But I am very firmly, I mean, you mentioned, I think at one point, Gael, that you've seen maybe an evolution in my thinking over the last two years, and I have, I am firmly in the, we have to use these technologies to innovate to solve some of the biggest problems that we've got, but with a very conscious awareness of some of the harms that could be caused. And yes, to think about how we kind of mitigate those.

Aiste Rugeviciute 54:40

I think this is the biggest challenge, how to innovate thinking about the system, about the global system, about the whole other potential impacts. Because if you look at the current strategist policy strategies or even within companies, right. All the strategies about sustainability, sustainable development, right. They are made in one line and then digitalization strategies are made in the other line and they're not really talking with each other. If you look, honestly, if even, I think the newest UNEP report on digitalization, they all talk how digital technology is going to empower and allow to achieve the digital development, sustainable development goals for sustainable development, you know, reduce some problems and so on, but they do not really talk about the potential negative effects that come with a digitalization. So currently in a lot of discourse, and that's what was really underlined in a digital reset paper report, which was published, I think, at last, in 2022. The policies do not talk with each other, and we need them to talk with each other. We need to ensure that digital transformations are aligned with sustainable development goals of sustainable development trajectories. And one of the things they are talking about in their report is exactly that. System innovations. That's what Rob was mentioning. So, innovations, first of all, I don't think that innovation should replace the word progress, which currently often is used instead of the progress we are using innovation. We used to talk a lot about advancing some progress and so on within the companies, and now it somehow got replaced by innovation, which is not exactly the same thing. Right? Whereas innovation, if we're using it as a definition, in order to come up with something new, in order to respond to the global challenges and global crisis, and we have a lot of those crisis currently. And I do believe as well, that technology has a lot of power, but it does have a lot of risks, associated risks. And we need to develop that capacity on different levels, on politics, on corporations, on individual levels, recognizing that technology is not neutral. We've been told, you know, oh, the technology is not neutral. No, it's not. Technology comes by itself with a negative environmental impact. I think one of the good examples is that because of the big data, because of the development in the algorithms, we have way more accelerated our knowledge of climate change. We actually can model things. We can understand it better because of the advances in it. So that's a positive thing. But now we know the problem is there. Now we understand very clearly where we are going. So it's time to shift and to use it differently and not to continue running huge calculations on something which we're not able or we don't have capacities to act upon. So I think that it's a very difficult change in mindset, because we don't like to think on a global scale. Right. It's difficult, I think, for us to think about positive and negative impacts at the same time.

Rob Price 58:39

20 25 years, nearly ago, I did some research around disruptive innovation, and I seem to remember a definition from that time that innovation was invention through commercialization. So innovation was nothing unless you found a way to make money from the thing that was being invented. And maybe we need to add with purpose or with an eye on doing it the right way to that definition. So it's not just invention through commercialization, but it's invention through commercialization with purpose.

Gael Duez 59:13

That's a beautiful definition. Well, thanks a lot, both of you. That was a very, very interesting discussion, especially at the end around innovation. I think we could have done another episode entirely on this topic, but I need to let you go to your regular life. So thanks a lot for joining. Thanks a lot for highlighting this very multiple aspect of a CDR. So thanks a lot and hope to see you in London in a few weeks.

Aiste Rugeviciute 59:45

Thank you.

Rob Price 59:46

Great. Thanks.

Gael Duez 59:49

Thank you for listening to this Green IO episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it and give us five stars on Apple or Spotify. We are an independent media relying solely on you to get more listeners. In our next episode we will talk about SEO, Search Engine Optimization and Sustainability. Does it sound like a long stretch? But I discovered Jean-Christophe Chouinard’s work 2 years ago and more recently the Green SEO meetup - a fringe event of the huge global convention BrightonSEO which seems to be to the SEO industry what Cannes festival is to the movie industry. It must be something related to the seashore… Anyway, I jumped on the occasion and invited 2 pillars of this Green SEO community Stuart Davies and Nathalie Arney. And I got great insights on how SEO practitioners should incorporate sustainability in their day to day job. 

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