How do you weigh efficiency versus sustainability in your information systems?

1 Define your goals

Before you invest in any IS, you need to define your goals and priorities. What are you trying to achieve with your IS? How do you measure your success? How do you align your IS with your mission, vision, and values? By clarifying your goals, you can identify the best IS solutions for your needs and avoid unnecessary or harmful ones.

2 Assess the impacts

Every IS has direct and indirect impacts on the environment and society. These impacts can be positive or negative, short-term or long-term, local or global. You need to assess the impacts of your IS from a holistic and systemic perspective. How do your IS affect the use of energy, water, materials, and land? How do they affect the health, safety, and well-being of your employees, customers, and communities? How do they affect the diversity, equity, and inclusion of your stakeholders?

3 Choose the alternatives

Once you have assessed the impacts of your IS, you can compare and contrast the available alternatives. You can use various tools and frameworks to help you evaluate the trade-offs and synergies between efficiency and sustainability. For example, you can use life cycle analysis (LCA) to estimate the environmental costs and benefits of your IS over their entire lifespan. You can also use triple bottom line (TBL) accounting to measure the economic, social, and environmental performance of your IS.

4 Implement the strategies

After you have chosen the best IS alternatives for your goals, you need to implement them effectively and efficiently. You can use various strategies to optimize your IS for sustainability. For example, you can use green IT practices to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of your IS. You can also use social IT practices to enhance the collaboration and communication of your IS with your stakeholders. You can also use ethical IT practices to ensure the privacy, security, and accountability of your IS.

5 Monitor the outcomes

Finally, you need to monitor the outcomes of your IS and evaluate their impact on efficiency and sustainability. You can use various indicators and metrics to track and report your IS performance. For example, you can use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your IS processes and outputs. You can also use sustainability indicators to measure the environmental and social impacts and benefits of your IS.

6 Adapt to the changes

The world is constantly changing, and so are your IS needs and challenges. You need to be flexible and adaptable to the changes in your internal and external environment. You need to review and update your IS goals, impacts, alternatives, strategies, and outcomes regularly. You also need to learn from your successes and failures and seek feedback and improvement. By adapting to the changes, you can ensure that your IS are efficient and sustainable in the long run.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?