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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The insurance industry, as one of the important sectors in the global economy, has a role in addressing environmental challenges through initiatives such as green information technology. Green IT in insurance refers to the adoption of environmentally friendly practices and technologies in the insurance industry in order to reduce carbon footprints and contribute to sustainable efforts. The purpose of this research is to present the framework for the implementation of green information technology in insurance as a guideline for the successful implementation of green information technology and to determine the actions of insurance companies to implement green information technology and create a sustainable environment. METHODS: The research method is hybrid or combined (literature review, work in the field and final analysis). The qualitative method of this research is based on a systematic review. First, the basic framework of information technology implementation was obtained using content analysis of articles. Then, to present the final framework specific to the insurance industry, an interview was conducted with insurance industry experts. After that, the obtained framework was validated by the experts by sending a questionnaire and calculating the CVR coefficient of Lawshe. FINDINGS: The findings reveal the necessity of ecological sustainability as a reality. The result of this study contains 34 categories and 8 major dimensions, including implementation drivers, resources and organizational capabilities for green IT implementation, standards and criteria, strategy, green application (use), green scrapping and the consequences of green IT implementation. And it shows the responsible actions of insurance companies to reduce pollution and protect the environment. CONCLUSION: The results showed that the most common factor in the implementation of green information technology is the reduction of electricity consumption, the social responsibility of the company towards the environment, and the existence of organizational and government rules and regulations in insurance companies. The findings of this research have addressed the research problem by developing the implementation framework of green information technology in the insurance industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GeSec: Revista de Gestao e Secretariado is the property of Sindicato das Secretarias e Secretarios do Estado de Sao Paulo (SINSESP) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

IT sustainability is becoming more and more important within the digitalization journey. It is more than green coding or the usage of power‐efficient hardware – it needs a holistic approach to leverage the potentials end‐to‐end in the software life‐cycle. The overall value stream within the IT organization is subject to sustainability alignment. This holistic alignment demands the engagement of different teams in large IT organizations. This article identifies the contributions of typical team stakeholders and evaluates their sustainability software engineering (SSE) contributions. This includes demand, architecture, design, implementation, operation, and usage. As an IT organization focuses on more than just software, the term sustainable IT engineering (SIE) fits better with the scope of organizational sustainability. The proposed approaches are presented based on instantiations within the Volkswagen Group IT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Placing sustainability at the core of computing practices, the industry is poised to pioneer positive changes and create a cleaner and more sustainable world for future generations. The environmentally sustainable computing (ESC) framework is introduced in this paper as an innovative solution to revolutionize sustainability practices across various computing domains and cover multiple aspects of sustainable information technology (IT). The ESC framework includes the entire lifecycle of computing systems, including critical stages such as design, development, monitoring, refactoring, and regulatory compliance. Through the adoption of the ESC framework, academia and industry stakeholders can gain a powerful tool to evaluate and measure sustainability factors across different computing domains and can integrate eco-friendly computing principles and patterns throughout their products and services. This can significantly reduce their carbon footprint while complying with environmental regulations. In addition to presenting the ESC framework, the paper showcases real-world use cases. The first involves a leading Italian bank, emphasizing the significance of monitoring and compliance in achieving sustainable solutions within carbon-aware computing. The second use case explores resource efficiency optimization in Kubernetes clusters, illustrating how the ESC framework aligns with cloud infrastructure management trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalating environmental impact of IT products in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, has prompted the exploration of specific green IT adoption practices, such as the use of energy-efficient computers, renewable energy-powered devices, and electronics with sustainability certifications. However, existing theoretical models often overlook aspects of long-term usage and resistance to technology adoption. To bridge this gap, this study integrates the widely recognized Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) to understand the drivers and barriers affecting consumers’ intention to adopt green IT products. Cross-sectional data were collected from 237 consumers using an online survey. Variance-based structural equation modeling (SEM), specifically partial least squares (PLS)-SEM analysis, was employed. The results underscore the importance of perceived ease of use and usefulness as key drivers of adoption intention. Simultaneously, active innovation resistance, encompassing usage, value, and risk factors, and passive innovation resistance, linked to image and traditions, emerged as significant barriers. Increased passive barriers underlined the necessity for particular approaches to overcome them. Using acceptance and resistance theories, this research has improved our knowledge of IT adoption dynamics. This study helps practitioners promote green IT adoption by emphasising user-friendly design and passive resistance. We discuss the study’s limitations and advise additional research.

How do green information technology (IT) standards and organizational strategies jointly influence firms’ environmental sustainability and financial performance? This is an important question, as many firms adopt green IT standards without considering the fit with their organizational strategies and therefore face uncertain or mixed outcomes. We address this question by developing a theory-driven conceptual framework and collecting archival data on green IT standards and green IT organizational strategies from more than 230 firms in India. Our analysis yields two main findings. First, an environment-focused green IT organizational strategy has a stronger positive moderating effect than a cost-focused green IT organizational strategy on the association between green IT standards and sustainability-monitoring capability. Similarly, an environment-focused green IT organizational strategy has a stronger positive moderating effect than a cost-focused green IT organizational strategy on the association between green IT standards and financial profit. Second, a dual-focused green IT organizational strategy positively moderates the association between green IT standards and profit. This study provides a theoretical explanation and empirical evidence to support the salience of green IT standards and complementary organizational strategies in advancing environmental sustainability and financial performance objectives. It also informs managerial decision-making about how firms can choose the appropriate green IT organizational strategy to enhance sustainability-monitoring capability and the financial benefits of green IT standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the article is to examine the agile behavior of enterprises in the context of the ecological use of IT equipment. The focus was on analyzing how enterprises implement Green IT practices and how these activities affect their operational and environmental efficiency. Design/methodology/approach: The research methodology was based on an anonymous survey among 578 enterprises representing various sectors of the economy. The survey aimed to collect data on practices related to the successive replacement of IT equipment, the implementation of technological innovations, the use of energy-saving devices and the integration of Green IT as an element of a business strategy. Findings: Research has shown that enterprises that regularly replace IT equipment with new ones are more likely to implement technological innovations and use energy-saving devices. Strong correlations were observed between the implementation of innovations and energy efficiency. Choosing suppliers that promote Green IT is an important factor for companies striving for sustainable development. Research limitations/implications: Research limitations include the subjectivity of respondents' responses and the lack of full representativeness of the sample. Focusing on specific aspects of the green use of IT equipment may have omitted other important factors. Research results have limited validity due to changing regulations and technologies. Practical implications: The research results suggest that enterprises should focus on the gradual replacement of IT equipment with modern and energy-saving ones and on the integration of innovative technological solutions. This approach not only reduces energy consumption, but also reduces operating costs and improves the company's image as environmentally responsible. Social implications: Implementing Green IT solutions as an element of a business strategy contributes to the protection of the natural environment and supports sustainable development. Companies that promote agile and green practices can gain greater trust from customers, business partners and local communities. Originality/value: The article adds value by comprehensively analyzing the links between enterprise agility and their green practices in the use of IT equipment. The study highlights the importance of integrating Green IT into business strategies and shows how such activities can bring both operational and environmental benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 55 percent of the world's 7.3 billion people access the Internet, creating a significant demand in information technology (IT) services for both organizations and consumers. The number of data centers continue to increase to meet this demand, consuming 2 percent of the energy produced worldwide. Many organizations moving towards cloud computing due to its ability to meet users' needs on demand. Greening cloud computing technology has become an important aspect of an organization's design and use of cloud computing. One aspect of greening the cloud is through efficiently using cloud-based resources. In this study, we focus on the resource allocation applications of cloud computing technologies to green an organizations cloud. We design a pricing and allocation mechanism for a private cloud computing service that allows the firm to effectively load balance their cloud computing resources. Our optimal pricing mechanism is a dynamic pricing model, which maximizes the net value of users in a private cloud computing service. Additionally, we create a job allocation algorithm based on our dynamic pricing model to load balance the cloud. We show that balancing the job allocation such that the number of jobs at individual resource servers as close to equal as possible is optimal. Furthermore, simulations were run on the allocation mechanism to examine the effects on the cloud resources while gaining insight to effectively distribution resources to public clouds. Our model can help organizations to efficiently distribute their cloud-based resources, which allows for a greener cloud computing system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly interest in Green IT has been rapidly growing over the past 15 years in a wide variety of disciplines including computer science, information systems, sustainability, production management and engineering. This is not surprising given the growing environmental impacts of information and communication technologies. This article presents a bibliometric analysis of academic literature across 1862 sources to improve our understanding of the evolution and current state of this multidisciplinary field. The corpus includes 4067 published journal and conference papers identified using the Scopus database. A descriptive performance analysis of the corpus using Bibliometrix software first allows us to identify the most influential works, authors, sources, institutions, and countries in the field. Examination of its conceptual structure reveals that most work has focused on the design and use phases of ICTs and neglected the manufacturing and end-of-life phases. Further insights are provided and opportunities for future research are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Public Administration (PA) in Portugal is impacted by the constant acceleration and evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), where the Portuguese State, transposing European Union directives, has legislated and encouraged their use as instruments of added value for the PA. Establishing rigorous and sustainable governance is crucial, ensuring that the organization's strategic objectives are aligned with ICT and, preferably, with Green IT practices. In this context, it is necessary to be able to estimate and subsequently evaluate the impact of strategic and operational choices on improving environmental quality. For such, this article presents a framework developed to optimize ICT management practices and indicators that, in this environmental area, support the forecasting and assessment of the impact of the choices made in the search for technologically advanced solutions in the Barreiro municipality. These choices enable, among other things, a reduction in energy consumption, implying a reduction in financial costs, resulting in environmental benefits, such as a reduction in CO2 emissions into the atmosphere or less deforestation. The results presented, obtained in a real-world context, make it possible to assess the progress of alignment with Green IT in this area, as well as the overall result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of HMD: Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Eco-conferences like COP26 in Glasgow (UK) in 2021 have brought the debate on energy consumption and climate change to the fore. Given that a third of the energy produced worldwide is consumed in the home, it is pertinent to investigate how households use emerging technologies that allow households to monitor their energy consumption. This paper investigates how Danish households use green IT to monitor and manage their energy use and studies the related meaning householders attach to the green IT. We present qualitative data collected through interviews with 14 households, electric car owners mostly, who have adopted an application to monitor green energy availability – and its derived consumption. The paper highlights these householders' green energy monitoring practices with an emphasis on the meaning they make of the green IT application they used. Our study found that households can use more green energy without interacting continuously with the green IT application. This contrasts with a common assumption in the field of green IT design that consumers must continuously engage with the green IT to consume more green energy. We also posit that including householders in future green IT design is paramount for designing successful green IT applications. Finally, this paper calls for household energy consumption studies to view energy consumption as a service where specific practices are matched to energy sources – rather than viewing energy availability as a solitary incident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a significant moment in the rapid development of cloud technology, large-scale cloud computing centers have emerged. With the emergence of the internet and artificial intelligence, enormous computing resources are required to process data and train machine learning models. The architecture of cloud computing centers involves millions of computing resources, and improper management of these resources can increase operating costs and exert tremendous pressure on the environment. This study proposes an optimized computing resource and energy management algorithm for computing centers with heterogeneous computing resources from the perspective of Green IT. Specifically, this study models the energy consumption at each point in time and the relationship between tasks and also considers the calculation of data backup. This approach will be expanded to optimize decisions for all computing tasks in computing centers based on the sequence of tasks and energy consumption while considering heterogeneous computing resources, energy efficiency, task scheduling, and execution time. By modeling this issue as a highly nonlinear optimization problem and utilizing mathematical programming and Lagrangian relaxation, we propose an optimized energy management algorithm to effectively manage computing resources and create cloud computing centers with high performance and low energy consumption.

The incorporation of sustainability principles during the requirements engineering phase of the development life cycle constitutes greening software requirements. This incorporation can have a variety of effects on the software design employed in modern and cutting-edge information technology (IT) systems. When sustainability principles are incorporated into requirements engineering, software design priorities can change and address current design issues such as energy and resource consumption, modularity, maintainability, and adaptability. In contrast to other green approaches that consider sustainable development, there is a further need to investigate the relationship between software development and the relevant green principles of sustainability during the requirements engineering phase. We present a new mechanism for mapping software nonfunctional requirements (NFRs) to defined dimensions of green software sustainability, consisting of two mapping steps: 1) between NFRs and sustainability dimensions; and 2) between sustainability dimensions and two clusters of green IT aspects defined in this work. The overall architecture of the promising approach is based on the use of the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) language model with an expanded dataset. We consider transfer learning and domain-specific fine-tuning capabilities for constructing and evaluating a model specifically tailored for developing a proof of concept of the greening software requirements engineering task, as language models have recently emerged as a potent technique in the field of software engineering, with numerous applications in code analysis, automated documentation, and code generation. In addition, we test the model’s performance using an extended version of the PROMISE_exp dataset after adding a new binary classification column for categorizing sustainability dimensions into two defined clusters: Eco-technical and Socioeconomic, and having a selected domain expert label the raw data. The model’s efficiency is evaluated using four matrices—1) accuracy; 2) precision; 3) recall; and 4) F1 score—across a variety of epoch and batch sizes. Our numerical results demonstrate the viability of the approach in text classification tasks via performing well in mapping NFRs to software sustainability dimensions. This acts as a proof of concept for automating the sustainability measurement of software awareness at the early development stage. In addition, the results emphasize the importance of domain-specific fine-tuning and transfer learning for obtaining high performance in classification tasks in requirements engineering.

Digitalization has permeated all aspects of human lives, economies, and societies. This transformation has been driven by the rapid growth in computing power, storage capabilities, and data transmission infrastructures. These changes have enabled innovations, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, smartphones, digitalized homes, (semi) autonomous vehicles, quantum computing, and more. Digitalization has further resulted in faster, more effective service delivery by many organizations. The phenomenon of digitalization relies on an increasingly finite supply of resources, such as crude oil, silicon, and energy. Over the past 150 years, humans have consumed as many natural resources as they have consumed in the past 20,000 years. In part, this increasing clip of consumption has been driven by digitalization, as novel, technology-based solutions, such as blockchain, supplant older, slower low-tech solutions, such as books and ledgers, to process data and create value. Digitalization's demand for resources may be leading us to an environmental abyss. Consider cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, whose electricity consumption is approximately equal to the energy needs of small nations such as Malaysia or Sweden. Such consumption evokes the question, is, "is more digitalization really better, or given the harm to the planet, is this one context where less is more?". In this paper, we develop a research agenda for understanding the full cost of digitalization and its impact on sustainability. We do so in three parts; first, we offer a crisp definition of sustainability; second, we offer a concise review of the digitalization and sustainability literature; and third, we offer suggestions for research that advances our understanding of how digitalization impacts sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging environmental sustainability as one of the most critical global challenges in our time, information systems (IS) scholars and practitioners have begun to address environmental problems by developing and implementing various green information systems. Besides pro-environmental IT artifacts, we argue that user-oriented green practices play a crucial role in ameliorating the adverse effects that result from making, using, and disposing electronic devices. To that end, we examine user intentions toward engaging in pro-environmental behaviors that can penetrate the electronic device lifecycle, which includes choosing, using, and disposing such devices. In particular, we adopt the extended theory of planned behavior as a lens and suggest ecological beliefs among users can determine their ecological attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, which, in turn, can shape their proenvironmental behavior. Also, ecological knowledge appears to play an influential role in changing user intentions to perform pro-environmental practices. We also revisit relevant green IT and green IS literature while providing future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ICT hold significant potential to increase resource and energy efficiencies and contribute to a circular economy. Yet unresolved is whether the aggregated net effect of ICT overall mitigates or aggravates environmental burdens. While the savings potentials have been explored, drivers that prevent these and possible counter measures have not been researched thoroughly. The concept digital sufficiency constitutes a basis to understand how ICT can become part of the essential environmental transformation. Digital sufficiency consists of four dimensions, each suggesting a set of strategies and policy proposals: (a) hardware sufficiency, which aims for fewer devices needing to be produced and their absolute energy demand being kept to the lowest level possible to perform the desired tasks; (b) software sufficiency, which covers ensuring that data traffic and hardware utilization during application are kept as low as possible; (c) user sufficiency, which strives for users applying digital devices frugally and using ICT in a way that promotes sustainable lifestyles; and (d) economic sufficiency, which aspires to digitalization supporting a transition to an economy characterized not by economic growth as the primary goal but by sufficient production and consumption within planetary boundaries. The policies for hardware and software sufficiency are relatively easily conceivable and executable. Policies for user and economic sufficiency are politically more difficult to implement and relate strongly to policies for environmental transformation in general. This article argues for comprehensive policies for digital sufficiency, which are indispensible if ICT are to play a beneficial role in overall environmental transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has become a critical issue for the software industry as the environmental impact of software development and use increases. To address this issue, organizations need a framework for developing and accessing sustainable software practices. In this study, we reviewed the existing literature, models, and practices in this domain as well as carried out surveys and interviews to understand the reality, practices, and challenges on the ground. We identified a set of research questions to discover why sustainability is important, what actions can be taken to improve it, and how and when they can be implemented. This study highlighted the limitations of existing models and the need to address the research gaps. Existing research is limited by a narrow focus on specific domains such as the environment and energy or a specific phase of software development. We aim to address these through the proposed comprehensive software sustainability capability framework (SSCF), which provides a "ready reckoner", allowing any organization to assess their current software sustainability and the capabilities and metrics they could focus on to improve sustainable software maturity. This paper also provides detailed assessment criteria, metrics, and a roadmap that can be used by any software organization to enhance their sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender differences in green IT awareness and practices were the primary focus of the study. This study was carried out in the Libraries of Public and Private Universities in the Lahore and Gujranwala Divisions. This study aimed to investigate the gender differences regarding personal norms of university librarians, gender differences regarding the behavioral intention to use green computing in libraries, gender differences regarding the ascription of responsibility regarding the use of green computing in libraries, and gender differences in terms of green computing for environmental concerns regarding the use of green computing in libraries. This study adopted a quantitative research design. The data were collected from 46 universities located in Lahore and Gujranwala. Seventy-five male and 57 female librarians provided data to complete this research. In data collection, the researcher employed a closed-ended questionnaire. According to the current study, respondents agreed that they are aware that e-waste generated by computer equipment contributes to global warming, that informal disposal is harmful to our environment, and that operating systems cause significant local ecological damage. The majority of respondents agreed that green computing practices could help libraries save energy and help reduce local environmental damage, as demonstrated by the results.

Copyright of Diversitas Journal is the property of Diversitas Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The rapid, widespread adoption of cloud computing over the last decade has sparked debates on its environmental impacts. Given that cloud computing alters the dynamics of energy consumption between service providers and users, a complete understanding of the environmental impacts of cloud computing requires an investigation of its impact on the user side, which can be weighed against its impact on the vendor side. Drawing on production theory and using a stochastic frontier analysis, this study examines the impact of cloud computing on users' energy efficiency. To this end, we develop a novel industry-level measure of cloud computing based on cloud-based information technology (IT) services. Using U.S. economy-wide data from 57 industries during 1997–2017, our findings suggest that cloud-based IT services improve users' energy efficiency. This effect is found to be significant only after 2006, when cloud computing started to be commercialized, and becomes even stronger after 2010. Moreover, we find heterogeneous impacts of cloud computing, depending on the cloud service models, energy types, and internal IT hardware intensity, which jointly assist in teasing out the underlying mechanisms. Although software-as-a-service (SaaS) is significantly associated with both electric and nonelectric energy efficiency improvement across all industries, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is positively associated only with electric energy efficiency for industries with high IT hardware intensity. To illuminate the mechanisms more clearly, we conduct a firm-level survey analysis, which demonstrates that SaaS confers operational benefits by facilitating energy-efficient production, whereas the primary role of IaaS is to mitigate the energy consumption of internal IT equipment and infrastructure. According to our industry-level analysis, the total user-side energy cost savings from cloud computing in the overall U.S. economy are estimated to be USD 2.8–12.6 billion in 2017 alone, equivalent to a reduction in electricity use by 31.8–143.8 billion kilowatt-hours. This estimate exceeds the total energy expenditure in the cloud service vendor industries and is comparable to the total electricity consumption in U.S. data centers. This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems. Supplemental Material: Data files and the online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4442. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing is a computing model which uses network facilities to provision, use and deliver computing services. Nowadays, the issue of reducing energy consumption has become very important alongside the efficiency for Cloud service providers. Dynamic virtual machine (VM) consolidation is a technology that has been used for energy efficient computing in Cloud data centers. In this paper, we offer solutions to reduce overall costs, including energy consumption and service level agreement (SLA) violation. To consolidate VMs into a smaller number of physical machines, a novel SLA-aware VM placement method based on genetic algorithms is presented. In order to make the VM placement algorithm be SLA-aware, the proposed approach considers workloads as non-stationary stochastic processes, and automatically approximates them as stationary processes using a novel dynamic sliding window algorithm. Simulation results in the CloudSim toolkit confirms that the proposed virtual server consolidation algorithms in this paper provides significant total cost savings (evaluated by ESV metric), which is about 45% better than the best of the benchmark algorithms.