Over the past few years, IBM has spoken to hundreds of chief technology officers (CTOs) reflecting a cross-section of industries for a series of Architecture Decision Points reports. Clearly, business leaders recognize that technology will be a central part of delivering the future enterprise. However, they are also well aware that society is looking to businesses to prove they can live by the values they espouse — and computing has a key role to play. And these same CTOs mentioned that the societal impact of technology is keeping them up at night.
What Is Responsible Computing?
A practical framework to help companies understand the environmental, social, and ethical impacts of how they use technology.
July 07, 2023
Yaroslav Danylchenko/Stocksy
Summary.
For businesses, technology has a variety of interconnected impacts including unintended consequences, data risks, and appropriateness of technological uses, as well as broader environmental concerns. The authors offer a systemic Responsible Computing Framework that integrates environmental challenges including energy consumption and emissions with many other social and governance aspects. It is a practical blueprint that firms can use to make their IT more green, ethical, trustworthy, and sustainable, based on six pillars that leaders need to address for their business to become a responsible computing provider: data centers, infrastructure, code, data, systems, and impact. For each they provide several KPIs that leaders should focus on.