As noted in conversations with the STAR group there are significant gaps in the understanding and practice of accurate measurement of the carbon footprint of digital services. There are good examples of partial assessments of the carbon footprint of services but they are typically hampered by limited access or visibility to the full datasets needed to do a comprehensive and accurate assessment. Much of this hampered by organisational, typically supply chain based, boundaries.
There are some but insufficient blueprints of design patterns to advise organisations as to how best architect and design services to achieve lower carbon footprints. While the larger cloud services providers have started to product material for this area with respect to their own platforms, this only goes so far into the stack of technology needed to deliver a digital service.
Similarly the design toolkits available are typically quite high level and lack detail and examples in many cases. In other examples the focus is very narrow, for example optimising web pages, and lacking consideration beyond the most externally visible aspects. While there is excellent material out there on best practice in design of digital services, it is very much in its infancy and only scratches the surface of what is possible in terms of carbon footprint reduction from a digital design perspective.
Many of those active in the field of net zero in digital have adopted a risk and cost based mindset to motivating action in their carbon reduction activities, considering inaction to be something they can ill afford. While there is high level evidence to support this from respected sources, there is a lack of evidence on more specific and localised worked examples. This makes building business cases for change more difficult.
Organisational culture and user behaviour change were very common themes in the conversations with best practice practitioners. There is significant potential to use digital technology to enact or support changes in these aspects of service user interaction, however there is little information available on how this might be possible and specifically done in relation to achieving net zero aims.