Policy Brief 1 - Conceptual basis of sustainable digitalisation

The digitalisation of our societies is transforming our world. As a result, people’s routines and ways of life are redefined through economic, environmental, social and governance domains. To some extent, it is unclear who will benefit from changes caused by digitalisation, and how, especially in the long term. In CODECS, we aim at shedding light on how socio-economic benefits will be distributed and redistributed and identifying ways of ensuring social, environmental, and economic sustainability with digitalisation. The CODECS conceptual framework operates in an ever-changing contextual situation in the agricultural sector in Europe. External drivers (e.g., social, technical, environmental, and political drivers) and internal drivers (e.g., capabilities, motivations and opportunities) influence entities, relationships and activities in different ways across different contexts. CODECS responds to this by applying a ‘system thinking’ approach to digitalisation levels. Three interconnected digitalisation levels are core to the CODECS conceptual framework: 1) Business processes, 2) Digital ecosystems, and 3) Socio-ecological systems. By distinguishing between different levels of digitalisation, the CODECS conceptual framework enables the necessary understanding of how to ensure acceleration of sustainable digitalisation through policymaking to influence change, by for instance, focusing on boosting the abilities of those involved and ensuring resources are sustained, accessible and fairly distributed.