Belgian Institute for Responsible Digital
Published on 22 December 2020
Publication
The launch event for the Belgian Institute for Responsible Digital Business took place on October 21, with the support of Digital Wallonia. The event took place as part of La Semaine Numérique and the EvoluTIC trade show in Namur, whose common theme was reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology.
Under its official name "Belgian Institute for Sustainable IT" ou "Belgian Institute for Responsible Digital" aims to structure the various social and environmental responsibility actions around our digital uses, and to help practices evolve to reduce their negative impacts.
Two key challenges of responsible digital :
use it to reduce humanity's environmental footprint and solve more societal and economic problems;
create sustainable value and innovate responsibly.
Three major themes for action:
Green IT: informing, raising awareness and encouraging more virtuous practices to reduce the environmental footprint of digital technology;
IT for Green: putting digital technology at the service of sustainable development, including maximizing the ability of digital technology to reduce the environmental footprint in other areas such as energy, transport, etc..;
IT for People: helping to reduce the digital divide, promote social and digital inclusion, and improve working conditions.
Le Green IT
The environmental footprint of our digital tools (cloud, televisions, smartphones, connected objects, sensors, infrastructures, etc.) continues to grow. A major polluter that is still often overlooked, digital technology was already emitting more greenhouse gases than civil aviation before the Covid-19 crisis, and is increasing by 9% a year. It also requires huge quantities of natural resources, including the famous rare metals. Extracting and purifying them requires a great deal of energy and chemicals, polluting many rivers and aquifers in the process.
But the general public has begun to become aware of the problem and to take action to reduce its negative effects. Politicians have also taken up the issue, but the groundwork remains to be done.
Businesses, which are major consumers of IT, as well as associations and public authorities, can therefore reduce the environmental footprint of their IT structures, but they need support to start this process in the best possible way.. Few Belgian players have the skills required to do this, and their services, which are often costly, can discourage more than one candidate from taking such steps. But few companies are really aware of the impact of digital technology, and therefore of the fact that players exist to help them, and even fewer of the competitive advantage this could give them.
L'IT for Green
Numerous Walloon SMEs are already active in this field, most of them grouped within the Clusters. Cluster TWEED et INFOPOLE Cluster TIC. This is an area where Wallonia has much to gain, given its central position in Europe, its multiculturalism and its productivity in the broadest sense. Nevertheless, it's also a field where competition is fierce. Being recognized in a broader context of Responsible Digital will be an additional asset for their European competitiveness, particularly in the context of the Green Deal. But, in the short term, many companies are not yet measuring the added value of this broader context.
What's more, enabling our companies active in IT for Green to measure and highlight the environmental efficiency of their in-house IT services will provide a logical complement to their broader environmental communications: offering such digital services without being exemplary themselves could become complicated in the context of many increasingly demanding calls for tender. Obtaining the Responsible Digital label, promoted by the Institut du Numérique Responsable at the European level, will ultimately be a differentiator. Major purchasers, whether large companies or public authorities, will be giving them less and less leeway in this area.
L'IT for People
Beyond the purely environmental footprint of digital technology, ISIT also aims to bring together players who want to raise awareness and change mindsets and behaviors in order to combat the negative impact that digital technology can have on the social divide or on economic parameters.
On the face of it, it may seem surprising that an association promoting digital responsibility should be involved in digital inclusion, societal impact and even ethics. But it all makes sense.
There are in fact many such players in Wallonia and Brussels, but they are little known or recognized, particularly by companies. Many of them believe that these are areas over which they have no direct influence other than philanthropic. However, through their digital practices, every organization can make a difference; whether it's gender equality in their own IT department, professional or social reintegration in workshops for reconditioning their digital equipment, job creation in Wallonia by carefully choosing their WEEE management partners, choosing suppliers based on working conditions in rare metal mines or equipment manufacturing plants...
The network of actions of all these players is therefore complementary to that of the Institute. Working together will guarantee greater resonance, and open doors to broader thinking and greater influence.
European Green Deal and digital file
Four months apart, the European Commission has published three strategies on ecology (the Green Deal), digital technology and industry. They are interlinked and aim to achieve climate neutrality and digital leadership for Europe. In three parts, AdN's Digital Wallonia deciphers the strategies and their vision: