A joint white paper from the IoT Alliance Australia (IoTAA) and the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) promotes IoT for sustainability, arguing that the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals should be factored into IoT projects and into all digital transformation initiatives.
The white paper How Digital Transformation and IoT Can Contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals is co-authored by Peter Klement (associate partner, DXC Technology), Frank Zeichner (CEO, IoT Alliance Australia), Brian Subirana (director, MIT Auto-ID Lab), Asif Gill (director, UTS DigiSAS Lab).
It says a 2018 World Economic Forum report Internet of Things Guidelines for Sustainability “clearly [shows] how existing IoT projects support UN SDGs, even though in most cases this was not the organisation’s objective in executing the project.”
(In 2019 DXC, the employer of one of the co-authors published a study Beyond Disruption: Australian organisations race to digital transformation success, but it made little mention of IoT.)
The authors cite another WEF publication Realizing the Internet of Things: A Framework for Collective Action, saying it describes five pillars for the successful introduction of IoT, and “as IoT is a digital technology, those pillars are likewise key to the success of the digital transformation of an organisation. … [They] are critical success factors for the successful implementation of digital transformation and hence key for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals an organisation has decided to pursue.”
Those pillars are: architecture and standards; security and privacy; shared value creation; organisational development; and ecosystem governance.
However, they note that IoT is only one technology for digital transformation and “is combined in business solutions with other digital technologies, like mobile, cloud, drones, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), all to support digital transformation. … Therefore, the WEF study results can be applied to digital transformation, which is enabled by IoT.”
The authors use a modified version of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle (Why-How-What), set out in his book Start With Why, saying it is “essential to inspire people to take action, and necessary to achieve the UN SDGs by leveraging digital transformation in organisations.”
They have modified Why-How-What to Why-What-How “to approximate how organisations currently operate and thereby increase the chances of achieving the relevant UN SDG.”
The UN SDGs are 17 interconnected goals to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They were unanimously adopted by all UN Member States in 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.
