CFIT to co-lead CODES work on sustainable procurement and green digital infrastructure

The collaboration brings together two closely connected agendas: greater international alignment in sustainable procurement and the development of more sustainable digital infrastructure and services. It also gives public procuring organisations a stronger voice in the wider international discussion on digital sustainability.

A global agenda for sustainable digitalisation

CODES is a global multi-stakeholder coalition for digital environmental sustainability. Founded in 2021 in response to the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, it brings together actors from government, international organisations, research, civil society and the private sector.

Its work is organised around three interconnected goals: Align digital advancement with sustainable development, Mitigate the negative impacts of digitalisation, and Accelerate digital innovation that contributes to sustainable development.

Impact Initiative 5 sits within the Mitigate agenda and focuses specifically on sustainable procurement and green digital infrastructure. Its ambition is to advance an international, science-based framework that supports greater standardisation and harmonisation of sustainable procurement principles and green digital infrastructure criteria across governments, companies and other stakeholders. This closely connects with the direction of CFIT’s work.

From common principles to procurement practice

CFIT is an international procurement-led partnership and programme that brings public and expert organisations together to accelerate circularity, fairness and sustainability in the ICT sector. A central part of CFIT’s work is reducing fragmentation in sustainable ICT procurement. Through the CFIT Framework, common Recommendations, practical guidance and international collaboration, participants work towards procurement approaches that are both more aligned and more readily implementable. That practical implementation perspective is particularly relevant to Impact Initiative 5.

International alignment is most valuable when common principles can ultimately be translated into procurement decisions: what procuring organisations ask suppliers to report, which requirements and criteria they use, how performance is assessed and monitored, and how buyers engage with the market.

As a co-lead of Impact Initiative 5, CFIT will contribute its procurement expertise and the experience of its international network to the further development of this work, while connecting CFIT’s own activities more closely with the wider international discussion on sustainable digital infrastructure. Extending sustainable procurement across the digital landscape

The collaboration also reflects the changing nature of ICT procurement. Digital infrastructure increasingly extends beyond individual ICT devices. Data centres, cloud services, networks, software, data and AI all form part of the systems on which public organisations depend, while also creating environmental impacts related to energy use, emissions and resource use.

CODES addresses sustainable digital infrastructure across this broader scope. CFIT is moving in the same direction by broadening its work beyond ICT hardware to Sustainable Digital Infrastructure, including data centres, cloud, software and AI. This allows sustainability considerations to be addressed more consistently across products, infrastructure and digital services, rather than as separate procurement challenges.

Stronger alignment, clearer market signals

For CFIT, the collaboration is a natural extension of its core purpose. Digital markets and supply chains are international, while sustainability requirements are still often developed separately by individual organisations and jurisdictions. Greater alignment can make sustainable procurement easier to implement for buyers while giving suppliers clearer and more consistent signals about the direction in which demand is moving.

CFIT’s Recommendations already seek to translate shared priorities into common procurement practices and implementation guidance. Connecting this work with CODES provides a wider international setting in which procurement principles, sustainable digital infrastructure criteria and practical implementation can be developed in closer connection. Through its co-lead role in CODES Impact Initiative 5, CFIT will contribute to moving the international discussion from shared ambition towards greater alignment and practical application, strengthening procurement as a lever for more sustainable digital infrastructure and services.