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FB5003-8

CSR, Green IT

+ Revision

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Introduction Climate Change is a significant driver of

green initiatives This may be most obvious at the individual

level– We are asked to turn off lights and to buy carbon

credits when we fly– Earth Hour is another popular appeal to what we

might call Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) But there are also significant organisational

issues and interests in the broader area of CSR

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Motives Why do organisations care?

– Economic incentives? Tax credits? Green is cheaper? Green is more profitable?

– Moral incentives? Appeal to ‘do the right thing’ for society?

– Political incentives? Government pressure Preparation for future legislation?

– Consumer / society pressure? WWF? Green Groups?

There are Economic Positives Going green can:

– Save space When employees telecommute, virtual teams

– Improve systems performance– Reduce power consumption

Because greener computers are more efficient Up to 50% of power >> heat in PCs Cloud computing also helps

– All these reduce costs and carbon emissions

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Telecommuting Working at home

– AT&T increased the number of sales people working from home; 15-20% more time with customers, saving US$550M.

– IBM saved US$100M in one US unit through telecommuting.

– Perkin-Elmer encouraged telecommuting and shut 35 branch offices altogether.

– Air conditioning (hot and cold) and lighting account for 70% of a building’s energy consumption.

But, it only makes a major difference if corporate offices get smaller or disappear. If the office is unused/empty, there is less effect.

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Virtual Teams Are characterised by

– Distributed members (city, region, country)– Longitudinal tasks (days to months)– A strong need for Collaboration, Cooperation &

Control But not all people like to work like this – and

not all organisations permit such work Further, there can be serious barriers to

effective virtual team work

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Humans Prefer Proximity… Biologically we are coded for it Food tastes better when eaten with others Our blood pressure rises and heart beat

quickens when close to others We conform more when with others than

when alone Social habits are often group related –

cohesive groups sit together, socialise, …

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MRO’s Regional Software Sales

Sales Managers & Executives spread around the SE Asia / Greater China Region

Living in one place, but responsible for a broad area (e.g. TW+HK+MO+HI or SG+MY or GD)

No office space provided – work from home, road, i-café, hotel, airport, …

Boss is in Shanghai – see him once a year, or less.

Colleagues, data, information are ‘virtually there’ with Lotus SameTime or MS Groove.

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MRO – It Works, but… Success depends on

– The right technology, people, attitude Success involves

– A new style of work, thinking, sense of responsibility Success is measured with

– Results, sales … not hours or seniority A successful culture has to be created and

maintained So, it can be green, but green may not be for

everyone

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Technology Support

Globally accessible web-based resources that support virtual work– eRoom, SameTime, Groove, GSS, Google

Docs/Apps, Wiki, G+, … Interorganisational Systems, e.g. TradeLink,

connecting clients with:– Banks, insurance, govt depts, trade agents, port

authorities, customs & excise, shipping companies, etc

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Technology CSFs Speed of connection (inc. bandwidth) Freedom of access to information

– Internet censorship of key public resources Political Green Lights

– No corporate censorship or blocking of IT applications

Functionality and Ease of Use Security, Privacy and Integrity

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Measuring Green IBM reports that “leading companies are

beginning to capture & report energy, water, waste and GHG emissions information”.– Discover what information is needed, at what

frequency so as to drive change.– Ensure that the right investments are being

made to meet long-term commitments IBM suggests that “smarter” companies will

track this kind of information on a daily, real-time basis and send it to "smarter" people who are trained and rewarded to drive continuous improvement.

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GreenSigmaTM: www.greensigma.org

“The adaption of Lean Six Sigma to environmental and climate protection”

“The Green Sigma™ Dashboard for Energy proactively monitors KPI data, alerts and trends, and enables drill-down analysis…”

“The Green Sigma™ Dashboard for Water monitors KPI data, alerts and trends to drive Water related benefits”

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GreenSigmaTM Energy Dashboard

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GreenSigma as a CSR Enabler?

The charts are simple but they only work if you have the data

They can highlight challenges by Illustrating patterns over time Breaking down data by function

They can also help with analysis Where is energy, water, gas being used and

when? But they can’t solve problems directly

Human interpretation of the data is still essential

Green IT Needs Enforcement of Green Policy

Reduction of consumption Extension of product lifetime

Power is needed to manufacture IT The longer an object is used, the more value is

obtained from that energy How often do you change your phone? How frequently does your company change IT

hardware? IT waste is a significant problem – 50 million tons

a year is dumped, not recycled, and much of it is highly toxic 16

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Xerox Operates many green initiatives

– Reduce, reuse, recycle When an old photocopier is replaced, all

reusable parts are reused in the same customer’s new photocopier

Toner cartridges always reused– Did you notice that CityU encourages recycling

of toner cartridges? In future, no toner cartridges at all – solid ink

sticks instead!

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Calculating a Carbon Footprint

There are many tools that you can use to calculate carbon footprints

Here are a few examples– http://www.co2list.info/topics/category/footprint%20calc

ulator– http

://www.wwf.org.hk/en/news/press_release/?2560/WWF-Reveals-the-Latest-Carbon-Footprint-Data

– http://www.climateers.org/eng/contents/climateer_calculator.php

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Consumer-Focused Initiatives EnergyStar is a US-based initiative

– Products can be labelled if they are certified as low power consuming devices

In the EU, the Ecolabel is found Others include the FSC (for paper),

MSC for seafood In Hong Kong, the Energy Label

from the EMSD of HK Govt

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Industry Initiatives The Climate Savers Computing Initiative

(WWF) aims to reduce the electric power consumption of PCs in active and inactive states

The Green Electronics Council offers the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool to assist in the purchase of "greener" computing systems.

The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems.

Revision Four weeks is a very short time At best, FB5003 offers a snap shot of

some key areas in the broader Information Systems field

We have looked at both individual and corporate level applications and contexts

The exam will similarly consider both these perspectives

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What to Revise? The exam is open book, open web, so

it is not strictly necessary to memorise everything

What you do need to do is to understand

The questions will be a mix of descriptive and analytical– What, How, Why, When?

They will not ask you to repeat seminar notes.

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Readings The class webpage has quite a lot of

external readings Some of these have informed my

teaching directly These often have good examples that

may be useful to illustrate answers The readings that we looked at in

class are particularly useful

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Question Style I have put some past questions into

the document on the website. These are really to guide you in terms

of how I ask questions You should expect that the questions

for the exam next week will be similar in format– Obviously, they won’t be the exact same

questions

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Exam Structure There will be one compulsory question You will also need to answer two more

questions (out of three) Each question has both easier and

harder parts– So you need to plan your time well and

ensure that you do have time to answer all the easier sub-questions

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Answering Technique It is critical that you answer the

question as stated– You can’t just answer the question that

you want to answer I know that it sounds ridiculous to say

this, but every year someone does just that

Examples are always helpful– Real or fictitious

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Time You have 120 minutes and the exam

will be marked out of 100– Roughly one mark per minute

So if there are 10 marks available, don’t spend 30 mins!

Spend a little time to plan your answers

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