Digitally Sustainable Information Systems in Axiomatic Design

Fabrizio Pecoraro, Elaheh Pourabbas, Fernando Rolli and Chiara Parretti
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Fabrizio Pecoraro: Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, National Research Council, 32-00185 Rome, Italy
Elaheh Pourabbas: Institute for System Analysis and Computer Science “Antonio Ruberti”, National Research Council, 19-00185 Rome, Italy
Fernando Rolli: Department of Engineering Science, Guglielmo Marconi University, 44-00193 Rome, Italy
Chiara Parretti: Department of Engineering Science, Guglielmo Marconi University, 44-00193 Rome, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-16

Abstract: Nowadays, information systems are evolving towards increasingly interconnected, smart, and self-adaptive models. This transformation has led to the representation of the systems themselves in terms of natural ecosystems. Similar to the natural environment, the virtual world can be threatened by specific forms of pollution, such as illegitimate access to the system, unwanted changes to data, and loss of information, which affect the only resource it possesses, i.e., data. In order to provide proactive protection of data integrity and confidentiality, in this paper we consider the well-known principles of privacy by design and privacy by default in the design phase of system development. To this end, we propose an approach based on axiomatic design, which allows us to implement these two principles through an appropriate reinterpretation of the information axiom, in terms of privacy impact assessment. We illustrate our approach by a case study, which implements the process of managing patients in home care. However, the proposed method can be applied to processing systems that provide services. The main result achieved is to select the most digitally sustainable design solution, i.e., the one that best prevents the threats mentioned above.

Keywords: digital sustainability; axiomatic design; privacy impact assessment; privacy-by-design; privacy-by-default (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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