Preparing for Sustainability Audits

The book is a practical guide to be used by people with no or little knowledge of sustainability and also 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 that far when the mandatory requirements are needed to be fulfilled by IT companies and they will be expected to prepare for annual internal and external audits like for many other standard audits. This book begins with explaining the main concepts of sustainability, continuing with presenting recommendations to turn those into practice, enabling the readers to make an IT company ready for sustainability audits after finish reading the book. The book starts with discussing the main concepts of sustainability which are common to diverse sectors and contexts. The first chapter makes the reader familiar with the sustainability dimensions from diverse perspectives. The next chapter explains the characteristics of IT sector which makes 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 includes 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 analyse the data collected. The final chapter provides information on how to prepare and release sustainability reports.