Sustainability
Guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals
We know that learning happens everywhere. That is why we get involved – locally and regionally, during school, work, and leisure time. We take initiative where it allows us to have direct and immediate impact guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Our sustainability efforts can be broken down into initiatives, which together build a bridge between our core business, carbon footprint, software development and the 2030 sustainability agenda. We also have an environmental policy to guide our work.
Helping our users reach their sustainability goals
We seek to engage with the SDGs where we can make a difference— with school managers, teachers, students and parents. Our work with education and technology is guided by our vision to create the best opportunities for everyone to learn more.
Here Goal 4: Quality Education and Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities speak to our core solutions for better school administration, effective planning of the school year and communication between home and school.
By mapping how our products contribute to relevant SDGs we ensure that we are helping our users shape more sustainable digital learning environments through our solutions.
Green offices and sustainable data storage
We take responsibility for minimizing our environmental impact as a business. This is achieved by measuring our carbon footprint, reducing our emissions where we can and offsetting the rest.
We’re aiming to reduce our offices’ environmental impact through several initiatives. We’re switching to renewable energy, setting up charging stations for electric cars and working with recycling.
In 2021, we reached a great milestone when the entire IST Group became ISO 14001 certified for our environmental management system which is proof that we systematically and continuously improve our work with environmental sustainability.
It’s important for us that our suppliers also take responsibility. Therefore, all of our data centers run on renewable energy. Our data storage provider Interxion also uses cold water to circulate between two large underground reservoirs to cool down the center, meaning the data center saves 1 233 MWh annually.
Together with our data storage provider we contribute to meeting the SDGs including Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production and Goal 13: Climate Action.
Sustainability Report
Promoting digitally secure and safe schools
With increased digitalization in the education sector, there is a growing responsibility to address information security and data privacy within schools. We always aim to provide tools that enable a digitally secure school, contributing to SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
Enabling our users to operate in a digitally secure way starts with our own internal processes. With an ISO 27001 certification, our information security management system ensures that we follow up on our commitment to securely handle and protect personal information within our organisation and among our providers. We seek to identify and mitigate potential risks and ensure that we have the capabilities in place needed to address issues at hand. With our main data center provider classified as tier III out of four levels, we can ensure our data storage is secure, stable and stays within the EU.
Through controlled information sharing of school-related data, we connect stakeholders within the digital ecosystems of schools. It’s easier to make relevant data available and control who has access to the information. Municipalities can access information at a municipal level, increasing transparency of reliable school statistics. Teachers, parents and students can access school-related services and systems through a secure login via SchoolID. With smart tools for digital school forms and photos, parents can give consent to handling of their child’s personal information in accordance with GDPR. We aim to work together with our customers to provide digital tools that continue to be secure and safe to use for all within schools.
Innovative and inclusive product development
As a leading edtech company, we strive to promote digitally inclusive learning environments. This includes developing products that are accessible to all. By living up to the new European accessibility directive (EU 2016/2102) we ensure that we can reach the 1 out of 5 users that has a disability.
Among other features, we provide captions on our videos, combine colour with text to display information and support tools such as screen readers. Here Goal 4: Quality Education is promoted by offering equal opportunities for diverse users within schools and Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure by increasing access to information and communications technology.
We also strive to make innovation a habit. So-called Lab Days and Mod Squads are two team activities where people can work with innovation and new ideas in a structured way. During Lab Days our developers get the chance to step out of their everyday tasks and focus working on a project of their choice. Whereas a Mod Squad consists of a cross-functional team that works on a time-frame project with a focus on one goal. Ideas originated from these sessions are already used in IST products today.
Sustainable growth
Our shared IST management system also enables us to work strategically with the SDGs to set new business goals and measure our progress. We thereby commit to assessing how our economic growth effects people and the planet, supporting Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.
We put words into actions! The foundation for our sustainability efforts rests on the awareness and inclusion of all coworkers taking initiatives around the office. Therefore, we have a corporate expert group focusing on sustainability. They are spreading awareness about the sustainable development agenda and how we can act upon that for a more sustainable IST.
Ambassadors for culture and values
A healthy and inclusive work environment is essential. Our company values support an honest, professional, creative and resourceful culture, allowing us to continue to grow by learning from our mistakes and each other. To make sure that we focus on this continually we have a group called “the Ambassadors.” This group implements initiatives throughout the entire organization in order to create a healthy culture and work environment based on our company values.
Recent posts
Edtech stands for Educational Technology and is an umbrella term for IT solutions developed to support education, with the aim of supporting learning and the learning...
After weeks of audits of our environmental management system, we are now proud to announce that the whole of IST is ISO14001 certified!