Part of our responsibility is to continuously assess our impact – identifying and quantifying the impacts technological development has on the environment and society.
04 March 2020
We see a future where information is the biggest driver for social, economic and environmental value. We must also consider the ethical aspects related to the use of advanced technology and be a forerunner in the area. Part of our responsibility as a key actor in this development is to continuously assess our impact – identifying and quantifying the impacts technological development has on the environment and society.
At the core of our business is the belief in the potential of modern technology to drive positive change for people, businesses and planet. Technologies such as AI and IoT, for example, offer tremendous possibilities for customers as they seek to make their operations more sustainable. But rapid technological change also poses risks in areas such as inclusion and privacy. We believe that sustainability in business should go beyond compliance and tying risk management to focus on creating positive impacts and business opportunities.
With sustainable IT, we investigate, understand, and communicate about the verifiable socioeconomic impacts our services and products have for businesses, users or citizens and as well as society more broadly. Each business unit in Tieto is responsible for the development of sustainable IT solutions. Projects identifying and quantifying positive impacts from IT solutions are carried out in co-operation between relevant business units and our sustainability experts on a case-by-case basis.
Although there are no regulatory requirements for measuring and reporting avoided CO2 emissions, this is a high priority in our environmental management system. Since 2010, we have measured the positive impacts of IT by calculating the CO2 emission avoidance enabled by replacing paper with our digital transaction services and other identified services. In 2017, for the first time we set a numeric goal for sustainable IT with the aim of further decrease both our and our customers’ CO2 emissions.
A company’s ability to be able to verify its impact on society and the environment is becoming a more important factor in decisions investors make about where they will invest. Equally, employees are more attracted to companies that can communicate a purpose beyond just financial performance. Our impact assessments have been well received by our stakeholders and there is a demand for further expanding the work. Our aim is to conduct both qualitative and quantitative impact assessment projects also in 2020.
Ethics and technology will continue to be a top priority for us going forward. We continue to develop AI use-cases as well as expand our understanding of the ethics around their use. Our goal is to further expand and recruit new roles such as AI ethics engineers and AI quality assurance experts to accelerate this work. Our aim is to develop and enforce best practices to address biases, transparency, security and safety of AI.
While we continue to be active in public discussion, we also see our employees as key resources in understanding the sustainability impact of advanced technologies. Awareness campaigns around different aspects of sustainable IT will continue in 2020. To increase awareness and employee skills in the area, training on sustainable IT, covering CO2 handprint, socio-economic impact and AI ethics will be organized for selected employee groups, such as sales and product development.
TietoEVRY’s new long-term sustainability plan will combine our joint ambitions, plans and activities for the development of Sustainable IT solutions for the next years.
Read the full text on sustainable IT solutions and learn more on our sustainability results in our annual report.