Ensure that the product or service you are creating offers value to visitors and doesn’t duplicate existing functionality (without bringing something new to the table) as this redundancy wastes digital and physical resources.
success criteria:
Sustainable Development Goals: Review and identify whether your product or service aligns with one of the U.N. (SDGs).
Creation Evaluation: Evaluate the desirability, feasibility, and viability of the digital product or service they wish to create to ascertain whether it is necessary.
Service provides benefits that outweigh the costs
Benefits maximized
Costs minimized
Avoid Duplication: Determine that no existing digital product or service offers the same value. They have conducted analysis to understand whether a new product or service is necessary.
No equivalent website or community
Service provides unique benefits
Obstacle Consideration: Consider any obstacles to using a product or service, such as accessibility, equality, technical, or territorial.
The organization has clearly defined governance policies around how it manages and maintains digital products and services over time.
success criteria:
Management And Maintenance: The organization has documented policies outlining how it approaches product management and maintenance.
Management policies defined
Maintenance policies defined
Planning Strategy: The organization has maintenance / security plans in place for all the digital products and services it manages.
Maintenance plans in place
Security plans in place
Resourcing Products: The organization appropriately resources products over time via staffing and budgeting to support refactoring code, addressing technical debt, new product features, ongoing testing, and product or service maintenance plans to continue supporting its customers, visitors, and other stakeholders.
Plans for the above in place
Resource Measurement: The organization incorporates carbon and resource measurement into maintenance programs and can show measurable improvement over time.
Having someone within an organization who represents sustainability as a core agenda makes good sense due to the accessibility, performance, financial, and other benefits which can occur from following best practices.
success criterion:
Ecological Referee: Choose and assign an ecological referee (with specific digital expertise) for the product or service within your organization.
Products or services update regularly, ensure that additions, changes, deprecations, removals, fixes, or security patches are documented in an easy-to-read document with details that showcase how such changes affect the visitor (or how they can take advantage of new features).
success criterion:
Feature Changes: The user-experience considers possible changes to the product or service such as adding, updating, or removing features.
An Impact Business Model enables an organization to incorporate specific impact initiatives into one or more business models for generating revenue, often making them “green by default” and folding impact initiatives into the organization’s operating system. Moreover, being able to calculate the return on investment in terms of sustainability your product or service will bring is important to identifying whether it poses a net-positive or net-negative effect on the environment.
success criterion:
Theory Of Change: The organization has completed (and operationalized) a Theory of Change process with requisite documentation to identify the impact it hopes to create, how it will generate revenue, shared, or added value from these activities, how it will measure results based on desired outcomes; or in the case of launched projects, is generating revenue, actively tracking and measuring progress against any desired outcomes.
The organization has clear onboarding and training processes that include ESG policies and practices with explicit references to digital sustainability and responsibility. Ensure that onboarding utilizes a “green by default” process and avoids being an opt-in procedure. This applies equally at an organizational level and to visitors and consumers of your products and services.
success criteria:
Training Materials: The organization has dedicated training manuals, workshops, and materials that outline the ESG policies and practices it follows and how to implement them. While managing and maintaining these materials over time, adapting them as new policies and practices arise.
Materials created
Materials regularly adapted as policies and practices change
Progress Incentivisation: The organization incentivizes leadership, teams, and stakeholders to make progress toward the goals outlined in their training, including time for sustainability activities, recognition for completion, and so on.
Incentives created and implemented
Negative Variables: The organization anticipates and maps potential negative external variables on the service, and acts to minimize their overall impact.
For-profit organizations have clear philanthropy policies and practices in place to help non-profit organizations build digital capacity and acumen while also engaging their own teams in meaningful work that promotes shared learning and stretch goals.
success criteria:
Philanthropy Policy: The organization has a clear corporate giving policy and creates philanthropic partnerships with strategically aligned organizations.
Philanthropy Policy in place
Voluntary Work: The organization engages in free or volunteer projects, which help its team learn new tools and tactics, while also helping charities and non-profit organizations build capacity.
The organization has devised and implemented a responsible data strategy that prioritizes data privacy and promotes more ethical uses of data, including disposal and data sustainability practices.
success criteria:
Privacy Policy: The organization has a public-facing privacy policy in place and supports existing privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and so on. This policy must be both accessible for all visitors, including those with accessibility and reading comprehension needs, and abide by plain English best practices to avoid jargon, technical language, and legalese.
Privacy Policy in place
Privacy Policy meets GDPR criteria
Privacy Policy meets CCPA criteria
Data Ownership: The organization can show measurable progress over time on how it respects data privacy and ownership, including a visitor’s “right-to-be-forgotten” and provides the ability to export data.
Mechanism for “forgetting” in place
No unnecessary data collected
Data Protection: The organization supports new and emerging legislation related to data privacy, data sustainability, and responsible data practices.
The organization has devised and implemented responsible policies related to artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and related emerging technologies.
success criteria:
Emerging Technologies: The organization has public-facing policies in place for emerging technologies.
ET policies created
ET policies published
Disruptive Technology: The organization can show how it up-skills workers as new technologies and practices potentially disrupt its business model.
Approach to up-skilling created
Approach to up-skilling published
Approach to up-skilling implemented
Technology Legislation: The organization supports responsible legislation related to automation and emerging technologies.
The organization shares the economic benefits of its digital products, services, policies, and programs.
success criteria:
Living Wage: The organization publicly commits to paying employees, contractors, and other stakeholders a living wage.
Commitment to living wage published
Commitment to living wage practiced
Incentivisation: The organization has policies and practices in place to incentivize stakeholders, such as workers and contractors, to meet its impact goals.
Incentives for meeting sustainability practices in place
Employee Benefits: The organization provides benefits to employees in accordance with its resources, including, where relevant, healthcare, retirement planning, flex time, profit sharing, and so on.
Benefits provided wherever relevant
Legislation Advocation: The organization advocates for responsible legislation that supports employment rights, transparency, and accountability related to sharing economic benefits.
Consistent advocacy for responsible legislation in practice
Allowing the visitor to take action to reduce their emissions is key to helping them play a part in becoming more sustainable. By helping them identify when choices they make could have an environmental impact (and by how much) and then providing them with the tooling choices to reduce their footprint, you can empower them to make a lasting difference.
success criterion:
Impact Communication: Clearly communicate the ecological implications of visitor choices and allow visitors to configure settings based on those choices.
Setting targets and limits regarding your product or service is important for keeping a sustainable mindset. Using budgets, you can declare the remits of which you will work within to ensure your emissions do not fall outside (and monitor your progress through development).
success criteria:
Environmental Budget: The product team has defined, baselined, and documented a clear sustainability and environmental budget criteria that covers the page, user-journey, and digital service levels and metrics (such as a CO2.js score) that are approved by relevant product stakeholders.
Environmental Budget defined
Environmental Budget implemented
Performance Budget: Use tools such as a performance budget to determine the maximum size (goals) your app or website can weigh to reduce the data transfer and HTTP request impact (using metrics like Google Lighthouse).
Set a performance budget
Measure performance with Lighthouse and other tools (make list)
Measurable Improvements: The product team can measurably show how much the budgeting process improved performance and reduced emissions.
Measure improvements
Publish improvement metrics regularly
Capacity And Maintenance: The product team invests in resources to build capacity and maintain the budgets over time.
Investments in resources to build capacity in place
Investments in resources to build capacity implemented
Investments in resources to build capacity publicized
The functional unit of a product is a quantified description of the performance requirements that the product fulfills. Ensure you identify the requirements of your product before development.
success criterion:
Life-cycle Assessment: Consider and conduct a life-cycle Assessment (LCA) to define the requirements of your product’s function throughout its lifecycle.
Being able to identify key issues with your website or application is essential, and while not a foolproof method, using tooling can help you achieve an overall idea about the state of your product or service’s environmental state (as such tools can do for accessibility).
success criteria:
Life-cycle Analysis: Conduct a full life-cycle Analysis based on the functional unit defined in “Determine the functional unit” above.
Life-cycle Analysis conducted
Competitor Analysis: Estimate the environmental impact of your or your competitor’s current service to inform decision-making (as a potential target goal).
Everything ends at some point, planning for if and when a product or service is finalized makes good ethical sense to ensure customers can be transitioned toward a replacement rather than losing access to their data.
success criterion:
End-of-life Care: Establish clear, documented end-of-life guidelines that include data disposal, archiving, file deletion, and so on.
Businesses should not only reference their own materials showcasing how they are working towards becoming sustainable, but cite existing sustainability best practices to help others looking to make similar changes within their own work or personal environments.
success criteria:
Inform And Train: Make sure that all project stakeholders, including product teams, colleagues, and organizational decision-makers (managers and clients) are informed about and trained in your business’s use of sustainable technology.
Sustainable practices documented
All stakeholders trained in sustainable practices
Adherence to practices closely measured and monitored
Active Participation: Encourages stakeholders to actively reduce their environmental impact by providing resources on sustainable design, practices, and concepts.
Engagement with sustainable practices strongly encouraged
Uptake of sustainable practices measured and monitored
The organization discloses and reports its ESG impact on at least an annual basis.
success criteria:
Policies And Practices: The organization has created and published policies and practices for disclosing the social and environmental impacts of its products, services, policies, and programs in line with existing reporting standards such as GRI Performance, SASB_, etc.
ESG impact policies created
ESG impact policies implemented and practiced
ESG impact policies published
Impact Report: The organization produces a publicly available impact report outlining its progress against previous reports on social and environmental goals at least once per year.
Impact report created annually
Impact reports published
Standards And Policies: The organization publicly and transparently follows existing or emerging environmental standards and legislative policy that promotes mandatory disclosures and reporting for emissions. This is done alongside other social and environmental criteria in its impact reporting, maintaining these practices over time for future reports.
Environmental standards and policies identified
Environmental standards and policies implemented
Environmental standards and policies adherence published (maximize transparency)
Impact Reduction: The organization clearly identifies how it reduces its environmental impact, avoiding double accounting, greenwashing, excluded data, or other manipulative techniques.
Business certifications can fill the gaps left by incomplete sustainability legislation. Ensuring a business complies with third-party certifications will help verify and apply an objective level of rigor to an organization’s sustainability efforts.
success criteria:
Certification Achievement: The organization has achieved one or more business sustainability certifications and incorporated operational policies and practices to support them.
Sustainability certification(s) achieved
Certification Maintenance: The organization maintains its certification through evolving policies and practices over time.
Define sustainability goals for the organization to meet and incorporate into its business model. Pair each goal with at least one clear, achievable metric or Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
success criterion:
Sustainability Goals: The organization has defined and published a clear set of sustainability goals. It publicly communicates how it will meet these goals, including which performance metrics are important to help the organization and its various stakeholders thrive.
The organization collaborates with suppliers, authors, clients, and other partners on initiatives that are both mutually beneficial and create positive social and environmental outcomes.
success criteria:
Vetting Potential Partners: The organization has created specific policies to vet potential partners in its supply chain based on ESG principles.
Policies for partner vetting in place and followed
Collaborative Measurement: The organization has partnered with suppliers to create, track, and measure collective impact on issues that impact their stakeholders.
Supplier collaboration implemented
Informative Partner Promotion: The organization promotes its partnerships in a publicly available place, along with information on how the partnership creates a collective impact.
Create a publicly available statement in an easy-to-find location on your website that outlines a clear commitment to prioritize ethics and sustainability ESG standards which align with the organization’s mission, vision, and values and includes statements specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs. This should be done while actively promoting such efforts (with evidence) using social channels.
success criteria:
Statement Availability: The organization has published a publicly available Code of Ethics, Product Guidelines, Sustainability, or ESG Statement that includes language specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs.
ESG policy published
Achievements And Compliance: List achievements, features, compliance, and anything beyond the scope of these guidelines and publish it in a sustainability section of your product or service.
Achievements and compliance published in sustainability section of web site
Governance Over Time: The organization can show how it effectively governs implemented digital sustainability, climate policies, and related ESG practices over time.
Evidence of governance over time published
Onboarding New Members: The organization has training decks and workshops it uses to onboard new team members on how it implements more sustainable product strategies.
Onboarding materials created, thorough, and up to date
Onboarding materials used for all new members
Documentation: Raise awareness with your visitor’s by documenting your methodology, through impact storytelling, documentation, and helping individuals make more informed decisions.
The organization has policies and practices in place to embrace experimentation, foster a growth mindset, support organizational agility, and provide continuous improvement. Product creators should iterate, regularly, though never at the cost of getting things done (such as working on larger, long-term features).
success criteria:
Continuous Improvement: The organization has created policies and practices to enable continuous improvement and has resourced the organization appropriately to support these efforts over time.
Continuous improvement policies in place
Agile Reviews: Agile sprints and update frequency must go through a review process to ensure project teams have enough time to conduct user-research, identify technical debt, and produce quality output.
Sufficient time allotted in sprints or equivalent to conduct above
Iterative Consideration: Use (and show a track record of) continuous improvement (iteration) to analyze your website or application while also addressing the by-products and potential consequences of ongoing experimentation, such as technical debt, product performance, emissions, and related issues. Limiting analytics to only necessary features to aid with decision-making, encouraging visitor feedback, and comparing performance against business goals and visitor needs.
Analytics limited to necessary features
Visitor feedback encouraged
Performance compared to business goals and visitor needs
Functionality Decisions: Justify and prioritize the retention of existing features, the creation of new functionality, and the decommission or elimination of unused functionality and unvisited pages through the product’s life-cycle.
Retention of existing features justified
Retention of existing features prioritized
Creation of new features justified
Creation of new features prioritized
Decommission of unused or obsolete features justified
Decommission of unused or obsolete features prioritized
Security Updates: Provide corrective security and policy updates during the product or service lifecycle, while distinguishing these updates from more extensive evolutionary updates.
Security updates implemented ASAP
Skills And Maintenance: Develop sustainable product and data strategies along with appropriate training techniques that help your team (managers, colleagues, etc) build capacity and learn new skills to manage and maintain products and services over time.
The organization implements responsible finance strategies, including divesting from fossil fuels and appropriately resourcing digital products and services to account for long-term care and maintenance.
success criteria:
Fuel Divestment: The organization has divested from fossil fuels and moved its banking, sponsorship, and other affiliations to more responsible partners.
Responsible partners found
Responsible Finance: The organization engages in flexible financing and responsible budgeting for its digital products and services to accommodate long-term care and maintenance.
JEDI Practices: The organization has documented its commitment to JEDI practices with clear policies on how it prioritizes marginalized or otherwise underserved communities, including Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQIA+, Women, Disabled, Veterans, Seniors, and so on.
Clear JEDI policies in place
Clear JEDI policies practiced
Clear JEDI policies publicized
Accessibility Policy: The organization has an accessibility policy for digital products and services and can show this via a verified accessible website, application, product, or service.
Clear accessibility policies in place
Clear accessibility policies practiced
Clear accessibility policies publicized
JEDI Training: The organization has JEDI-related training materials and schedules ongoing workshops related to how this topic manifests itself in digital products and services (algorithmic bias, digital divide, gig economy work, mis / disinformation, etc).
JEDI training program implemented
JEDI Improvements: The organization can show measurable JEDI improvement over time in its hiring, leadership, and operations.
JEDI improvements monitored and publicized
JEDI Legislation: The organization advocates for responsible legislation relating to JEDI practices, especially as related to digital products and services.
The organization has clear policies about using open source tools, including how it gives back to the community and responsibly manages code repositories to reduce waste.
success criteria:
Open Source Policy: The organization has a clear open source policy in place that outlines how it uses open source tools and the practices it supports surrounding open source development.
Use OSS wherever practicable
Promote OSS
Collaboration: The organization has a track record of collaboration and community-building around open source principles.
Embrace OSS in the code base
Invite and promote collaboration
Contribution: The organization regularly contributes to open source community-based projects
Expired or unused data has a cost, it takes up space, and it requires maintenance. As such, the ability for customers to manage their own data and for service providers to manage older website material which no longer applies but might still have use will be a carbon benefit.
success criteria:
Outdated Content: Outdated or otherwise expired product content and data are archived and deleted via automated expiration dates and scheduled product audits. Create an archiving schedule with a lighter version of the old searchable content available.
Outdated content removed or archived
Archiving/removal schedule implemented
Implement automated expiration where practicable
Data Controllers: Enable users to control, manage, and delete their data, subscriptions, and accounts.
Ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table is important to promoting voices who may not otherwise have their voices heard, and potentially getting useful ideas from fresh sources.
success criterion:
Decision-Making: Ensure that the project team’s goals are aligned with key business objectives, and project stakeholders (for example, project managers) have the power and autonomy to make key decisions on the organization’s behalf.
Key business objectives defined
Goals aligned with key business objectives
Stakeholders empowered to make decisions with autonomy