How to Implement Responsible Digital Practices in Your School or Training Organization?

Implementing responsible digital practices in your school or training organization involves first developing a responsible digital strategy, followed by creating an internal action plan.

Developing Your Responsible Digital Strategy
Three key points are essential to consider when developing a sustainable responsible digital strategy for your organization:

1 - Acculturation and Training of Teams in Responsible Digital Practices:
This is a crucial step for subsequently implementing a solid action plan. The reason is simple: digital pollution and the impacts of digital technology are not as obvious to grasp as the waste from packaging piling up in our trash bins. Free self-training tools are available on this topic, such as the MOOC from the European Institutes for Sustainable IT (available in English and French) or the My Green Training Box platform, which offers free digital training courses in multiple languages.

2 - The 3 U's: Useful, Usable, and Used:
This is an excellent way to reflect on and question your digital practices. Is it useful to keep training resources on your platform and servers for a course you no longer offer because the profession has disappeared? Is it useful to invest in virtual reality equipment in anticipation of its possible future use? Is it useful to use two screens to read your emails? Is it useful to create training content on a topic when excellent free resources already exist?

3 - A Gradual Approach Implemented Step by Step:
Indeed, a realistic and sustainable approach allows for an action plan adapted to your organization. Imagine your teams: they had to digitize their training, comply with certain standards, and now you're adding responsible digital practices? For this to work, you must ensure everyone's participation and buy-in.

Defining an Action Plan
Once your responsible digital strategy is established, you can define a simple action plan in four steps:

Step 1: Raise Awareness Among Your Team
Before even considering the changes you can implement, the first step is to raise your team's awareness about responsible digital practices.

Several cumulative options are available:
- Organize a kick-off meeting explaining why you want to implement this approach
- Have them participate in awareness activities about responsible digital challenges
- Offer them responsible digital training
- Summarize the key challenges in your sector

The objective is to inform and standardize everyone's knowledge by raising awareness of your organization's stakes in taking action, thereby reducing resistance to change among some and developing the desire to act among others.

Step 2: Form a Working Group
Internally: During a project presentation meeting, ask who is interested in supervising the implementation of actions.
Externally: With third parties, especially if you're a manager with few or no employees. This could be through a local association, a group you're already part of, or one you can create with local stakeholders.The objective is to use collective intelligence to find solutions and gain motivation through group dynamics.

Step 3: Conduct a Self-Diagnosis
This third step allows you to identify your emission sources. For a training organization, this could include transportation, energy savings, IT equipment purchases, as well as accessibility of digital resources, size of digital content, etc.

Step 4: Propose Solutions
This final step enables you to collectively seek ideas to improve your daily actions. Once project ideas have been discussed, decide on the timeframe for implementation: 1 year, 2 years, 3 years?

Create a responsible digital backward planning schedule. Setting deadlines for the different stages of your project is crucial for sustainable development success. You can use SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound, to increase your chances of success.