Frankly CSR

As I mentioned in my previous posting, I’m in Australia for The Green CIO conference, as well as a three-day Lawson user group meeting for customers in Australia and New Zealand. 

The Green CIO conference was a very interesting event.  It included about 200 companies, media outlets, and vendors. The conference had a heavy focus on the environmental impact of hardware (mainly servers) and data centers. That isn’t surprising given that IT represents 2 percent of all electricity consumption in the United States; half of that is from data centers.  

Two presenters mentioned that IT’s environmental footprint is equal to that of the commercial aviation industry.  Of course, IT doesn’t have the same public relations issues as the commercial aviation industry because our environmental impact is a lot less visible to people.  

Reducing the energy consumption of hardware was cited as the “low-hanging fruit” of reducing IT’s environmental impact. That’s probably true, and I would never discourage organizations addressing that issue, but I hope they are also looking more broadly at the role IT can play around CSR. I tried to communicate that message in my presentation. The feedback I received from the conference organizers and participants was very positive, but let me know what you think. 

As I mentioned earlier, I also attended the Lawson Australia-New Zealand user group event. At the event, I delivered a speech very similar to my Green CIO conference presentation.  The roughly 150 participants were a mix of about 50 percent IT leaders and 50 percent business-line leaders. The feedback from participants was two-fold:

1) CSR is moving up on their priority list and is starting to (or already has) get the attention of their senior leadership.

2) They appreciated the insight on how business software can be used as a tool to help manage CSR programs. 

I’m not looking for sympathy, after all I am in beautiful Australia, but during my week in Sydney and on the Gold Coast it’s done nothing but rain. 

G’day mate! 

Jeff

I’m at The Green CIO conference, presented by CIO Magazine Australia, in Sydney this week. This is an innovative conference that Lawson became involved with as soon as we heard about it. The conference places a sustainability focus on a broad range of information technology topics, including IT strategy, hardware, software, data centers, and change management. I’ll be speaking on the role that business software can play in helping companies manage their CSR programs.

I’m not surprised this type of conference is taking place in Australia. From what I can tell based on a survey of Lawson’s Australian customers and by reading business publications from the region, Australian businesses seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to CSR. For example, telecommunications and IT provider, Telstra has issued an Annual CSR Report since 2003 that rivals those produced by an investor relations team. It details the company’s social activity in relation to its customers, employees, communities, and marketplace. It’s a bit long, but worth the read.

I’m excited about the opportunity to interact with a group IT professionals who are thinking about sustainability. I’m sure it will be a great learning experience. I’ll report back on the conference next week.

Jeff