Preparing for Sustainability Audits: A Practical Guide for the IT Sector

This book is a practical guide to be used by people with little or no knowledge of sustainability as well as sustainability professionals and experts who intend to prepare software companies to undergo sustainability audits and assessments conducted by different organizations, successfully. With sustainability regulations and rules becoming stricter gradually, it will not be long until the mandatory requirements are needed to be fulfilled by IT companies and they will be expected to prepare for annual internal and external audits as they are for many other standard audits. The book begins with explaining the main concepts of sustainability, continuing with presenting recommendations to turn those into practice. Upon completion, it will enable a reader to make an IT company ready for sustainability audits. The first chapter makes the reader familiar with the sustainability dimensions from diverse perspectives. The second chapter explains the characteristics of the IT sector that make it unique in terms of the implementation of sustainability related activities. Subsequently, the challenges and solutions on the way to prepare IT companies for sustainability audits and assessments are brought to attention, together with guiding the readers through this procedure. The third chapter focuses on documentation for sustainability audits, including but not restricted to statements, policies, procedures, and other supplementary documents. Chapter 4 contains the details regarding actions, from the very first stage of planning actions to revising and correcting them. Furthermore, it encompasses instructions on how to identify metrics for the activities planned. The fifth chapter guides the readers on how to measure the progress of actions, followed by discussions on how to analyze the data collected. The final chapter provides information on how to prepare and release sustainability reports.