A Capability Maturity Framework for Sustainable Information and Communication Technology

Researchers estimate that information and communication technology (ICT) is responsible for at least 2 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Furthermore, in any individual business, ICT is responsible for a much higher percentage of that business's GHG footprint. Yet researchers also estimate that ICT can provide business solutions to reduce its GHG footprint fivefold. However, because the field is new and evolving, few guidelines and best practices are available. To address this issue, a consortium of leading organizations from industry, the nonprofit sector, and academia has developed and tested a framework for systematically assessing and improving SICT capabilities. The Innovation Value Institute (IVI; http://ivi.nuim.ie) consortium used an open-innovation model of collaboration, engaging academia and industry in scholarly work to create the SICT-Capability Maturity Framework (SICT-CMF), which is discussed in this paper.