Progress toward a more sustainable world can start with data.

According to data from the United Nations, UN Secretariat staff took 100,000 trips in 2017. While the global pandemic has presumably brought that number down significantly since, the nature of the UN’s charter demands a significant amount of international transit, and this can take its toll on the environment.

This became a key area of interest for Julie Kae (pictured, left), vice president of sustainability and DE&I and executive director of QlikTech International AB, who worked with UN staff to build a travel dashboard that would calculate greenhouse gas or GHG emissions from air travel across the UN system.

“They still use that today to make decisions going forward,” Kae said. “When they book travel for UN representatives, they’re looking at the environmental footprint of that travel that they book or suggest. It’s about unlocking that information and making it actionable.”

Kae spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin at the QlikWorld event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. She was joined by Lambert Hogenhout (center), data, analytics and emerging tech at the United Nations, and Sally Eaves (right), senior policy advisor of the Global Foundation for Cyber Studies & Research, and they discussed how partnerships and a focus on data are contributing to a more sustainable future. (* Disclosure below.)

Democratizing data tools

The UN project offers an instructive example of how the private sector can work closely with non-profits and major global institutions such as the UN to create change. Qlik’s partnership with the UN led to the deployment of technology designed to help the organization put its extensive data resources to better use.

“What we first did was get everyone excited with some interactive data visualizations,” Hogenhout recalled. “We had a problem because we needed to be able to scale that up and enable self-service. My team couldn’t make the dashboards for all the 40,000 staff of the UN, so we needed to democratize that. That’s where we started our relationship with Qlik.”

Other organizations, such as Eaves’ foundation, study cyberspace issues from the intersecting dimensions of policy and technology. Eaves has seen a willingness in the private sector to come together and address important global issues.

“More organizations are partnering together as well,” Eaves said. “(There is) much better collaboration to make more resources freely available to more people. There’s the will to do more.”

That willingness can be greatly aided through the use of data and tools supplied by technology providers.

“Oftentimes, understanding how an organization might be able to reduce its carbon footprint, for example, needs a lot of data and needs a lot of information as well as the ability to make better decisions going forward,” Kae said. “We think about how we can help our customers also combat climate change, and we play a really interesting role in that we help our customers with data.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the QlikWorld event:

(* Disclosure: QlikTech International AB sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Qlik nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE