GMGIT: A framework for green it governance, management and auditing

For thousands of years human beings have been able to enjoy the best gift they could ever have: a healthy planet, a noble environment, and an exuberant nature. But as humankind has evolved, it has increasingly despised this treasure. The selfishness, greed, and lack of culture of the human race have led the entire planet to a situation of extreme gravity. That is why the idea of sustainability has emerged. To save the planet and to save our future and that of future generations. Nowadays, a growing part of society and organizations joins the defense of sustainability. But, unfortunately, this adhesion is too slow and insufficient. Most organizations, the main consumers of resources, are not yet aware of this situation. The root of the problem lies in the difficulty and handicaps that exist to adopt sustainable practices, due to the lack of guidelines, standards or frameworks to address sustainability in specific areas of the business. Of the areas of business, today the most important and determining for organizations is the area of Information Technology (IT). Its constant evolution, exponential growth, and adoption in all other areas have not only brought it to this outstanding position, but have also made it a clear enemy of the environment. For this reason, the so-called Green IT has emerged, which struggles to turn this situation around through sustainable practices in and by IT. In this sense, this PhD Thesis aims to end the handicaps that exist when it comes to bringing sustainability to IT through Green IT, proposing the "Governance and Management Framework for Green IT" (GMGIT). This framework contains the necessary characteristics and components to define, implement, assess/audit, control, and improve Green IT in organizations; all from the governance and management of this area and in a systematic and progressive manner. Likewise, the adoption and adaptation of wide adopted standards, such as COBIT (for the structure of governance and management components), ISO/IEC 33000 (for the maturity model developed specifically for the framework),and ISO 14000 (for the adoption of recognized sustainable best practices), make the GMGIT a solid framework and aligned with the best practices of the industry. In order to perform all this development, the research methodology that has been followed includes the Technical Action Research (to manage all the research work and cycles) combined with the Systematic Mapping Study (to analyze the state of the art) and case study and focus group (as empirical and theoretical validation methods, respectively). The empirical validations have been conducted in several organizations at international level (in four different countries) within the context of organizations dedicated to providing IT services in different areas (education, e-administration, security, and so forth). Thus, the results obtained and validations conducted demonstrate that the GMGIT is a consistent, valid, and useful framework for organizations in their quest to be sustainable in and by IT, as well as to obtain greater efficiency and effectiveness in Green IT