Elevating the Role of Open Technology in Sustainability - Building the Metrics of Su... Amanda Brock

Elevating the Role of Open Technology in Sustainability – Building the Metrics of Success – Amanda Brock, OpenUK

Open Technology – open source software, open hardware and open data – provides a critical enabler to a sustainable future. It is no longer enough to watch from the sidelines, but time to elevate the role of Open Technology in Sustainability. As a first mover in the open source community’s engagement with Open Technology for Sustainability, OpenUK hosted a full day event at COP26 in November, 2021. Although some COP26 contributors have been criticised for leaving the story behind in Glasgow. OpenUK is actively engaged via its Chief Sustainability Officer and Sustainability Advisory Board, to implement a Sustainability Strategy. This not only means that everything OpenUK does is sustainable by design, but also ensures that it drives the global Sustainability Strategy forward with Open Technology. Economic measures need refined and improved to look at the value generated and investment made as opposed to the Total Cost of ownership, but the critical path must measure the non-economic societal value provided by Open Technology, aligning to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. What is an acceptable approach to measuring this? OpenUK will deliver v1.0 f its “Societal Value Metrics” for Open Technology – a means to measure the non economic values it generates.