The pandemic acted as a catalyst around IT purchasing, as the move into the home office meant that many employees who up until that point worked fully in the office on desktop computers had to be stocked up with laptops and accessories, including most of the 705 Members, more than 1500 Accredited Parliamentary Assistants and more than 6500 permanent and temporary officials of the European Parliament. This required a rapid expansion of the IT park, as well as software to enable digitalization of processes, compressing evolutionary initiatives intended to take years into several months, all having to be in line with the organization’s regulatory and policy standards, in particular with regards to security and data protection. With all these purchases, reflecting several years down the line, the question of sustainability arises – how can we ensure that the IT park rapidly expanded is rightsized and kept modern down the road, while respecting environmental concerns and budgetary sustainability in a challenging macro-economic environment? This question does not relate exclusively to hardware, but to software and SaaS applications as well, where those digitalized processes based on newly deployed tooling must continue to be supported in an evolving data protection regulatory environment.

• How has the speed up of digitalization influenced by the pandemic affected IT purchasing today?
• How can we stay compliant with data protection evolution amidst an evolving SaaS marketplace for supporting digitalized processes?
• How can we win the sustainability challenge while keeping costs manageable?