1st Conference on Sustainability and Data - Connecting Perspectives Between Practitioners and Researchers
2023 marks the mid-point of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as it was established in 2015 through the UN General Assembly. The 2030 Agenda aims at fulfilling a series of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that address three dimensions of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental.
Sustainability data is an important component in measuring, monitoring, and benchmarking each country’s progress in fulfilling the SDGs. As a result, organizations in both public and private sectors began to measure their sustainability performance digitally, ranging from organizational carbon footprint, energy consumption, gender diversity and equal pay, to employment and financial results. Meanwhile, challenges also start to emerge in the governance, management, and handling of sustainability data, raising questions for practitioners and researchers who work in the intersection between sustainability and data.
The 1st Conference on Sustainability and Data (S&D): Governance and Management Experiences and Reflections is a platform that brings together sustainability and IT researchers, managers and policymakers to share their experiences and challenges in working with sustainability data, and to discuss concepts, practices and processes that are important to make the SDGs more operationalizable. More specifically, the 1st S&D conference emphasizes the important role of the digital in implementing the SDGs, both from the perspective of sustainability data and the impact of digital solutions on sustainability.
We, at the IT University of Copenhagen and the University of Münster, invite you to be part of the conversation with sustainability and IT researchers, managers and policy makers who work with the governance, strategy and management of sustainability data. The 1st S&D conference takes a European perspective on the implementation of SDGs, and resonates with the week of the 2023 SDG Summit at the UN headquarters in New York to remind decision-makers of tangible innovative data solutions and challenges. The conference takes the format of a dialog by bringing practitioners and researchers together under different topics, jointly reflecting on the existing discourses, practices, and transformative possibilities around sustainability data.
Conference Program
· Keynote
· Session 1: Current sustainability metrics and KPIs in use
o What are the emerging standards, approaches, and emphasis on sustainability metrics?
o How are these standards translated into organizational KPIs?
o What are we still missing?
· Session 2: Governance complexity, IT and sustainability
o Where do organizations receive compliance pressure in relation to the sustainability agenda?
o Which regulations are organizations complying to?
o Which governance structures do organization use internally to address sustainability agenda?
o How do these new governance structures shape existing finance, business, and IT decisions?
· Session 3: CSR strategy and organizational processes
o How are sustainable (IT) strategies formed?
o What are the new organizational processes that stem from the strategic change?
o What are the challenges in designing and implementing CSR strategies and related organizational processes?
· Session 4: Organizing sustainability data for controlling systems
o What are the new developments in the existing enterprise systems?
o Are there any new enterprise systems that are developed for sustainability purposes?
o How are the new sustainability related features and systems designed, developed, and implemented?
o What are the challenges in designing, developing, and implementing them?
· Session 5: Sustainable IT, the other way around
o What is IT’s impact on sustainability?
o What are the emerging standards and metrics used for measuring IT’s impact on sustainability?
o What are the primary challenges in understanding and measuring IT’s impact on sustainability?
· Session 6: Transformative possibility and impact1
o What are the actual impacts of current corporate and research efforts in relation to sustainability?
Date and Time:
· Virtual Conference
· 12th of September, 2023
· Start Time 09:30AM (CET)
· Registration link: tba
Please make sure to register by August 31st, 2023, if you would like to participate as an audience.
We are looking forward to this day!
Your Organizers,
Dr. Cancan Wang – for the Department of Business IT at the IT University of Copenhagen
Dr. Lea Püchel – for the Digital Innovation and Public Sector Institute at the University of Münster
Literature:
1 Grainger-Brown, J., & Malekpour, S. (2019). Implementing the sustainable development goals: A review of strategic tools and frameworks available to organisations. Sustainability, 11(5), 1381.
