# A Novel ICT Framework for Sustainable Development Goals
## 1 Introduction
ICTs play the role of catalyst in all three cornerstones of sustainable development (economic development, social inclusion, and environmental protection), but they are also critical for attaining all SDGs. To that end, the effective implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Action Lines can help accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. The WSIS-SDGs Matrix, developed by the UN Action line Facilitators, provides rationale and clearly indicates the linkage between each Action line and the SDGs [6]. Figure 1: 17 sustainable development goals clustered into three pillars: economic, environmental, and social. Thanks to Moore's Law, ICT has actually brought about the Information Age, the fifth great technological age since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Each of these five ages, the so-called Kondratieff Waves, has accelerated growth and development of the global economy: steam engine and textile industry (1780-1830), railway and steel industries (1830-1880), electricity and chemistry (1880-1930), automobiles and petrochemicals (1930-1970), and information (1970-present) [7; 8]. ICT has prompted global economic growth for at least 30 years, but its utmost gains are yet to be attained. In other words, the Information Age is expected to clear the way for the Age of Sustainable Development, i.e., the (sixth) surge of sustainable technologies that will make the SDGs as successful as possible [8; 9]. The ICT revolution is of course not based on one technology, but represents an interaction of fundamental technologies, including computer design, digital wireless, statistical multiplexing, encryption, satellite communications, machine learning, to name but a few. No less important is the use of ICTs. Taking into account that these technologies have a major role to play in creating, storing and transmitting information and in reducing the market failures associated with information asymmetries [10; 11; 12], ICT has an indirect effect on productivity which is mainly visible in sectors using them [13]. That is to say, \"ICT are enablers of product, process and organizational innovation in ICT-using sectors, and this, according to [PERSON] and [PERSON] [14], qualifies them as General Purpose Technologies (GPT): technologies that are pervasive--i.e., can be applied to several production processes--allow continuous improvements and experimentation and facilitates innovation in using sectors (through co-inventions)\" [15]. The influences are so much extensive, with a huge number of complementarities (as reported by [PERSON] and [PERSON]), that ICT has properly been viewed as generating an overall social transformation, the so-called Networked Society [3]. In a nutshell, ICT has the capacity to produce a digital transformation of the entire society and a huge potential to raise the rate of diffusion of variety of technologies, applications and platforms across the economy. Yet it is noteworthy that there has been an emergence of literature all pointing out that ICTs are also subject to significant rebound effects of all kinds (energy, time, and knowledge-related), especially because they are GPT that can produce high resource savings all over the entire economy and society [16; 17]. Rebound effects are actually the \"negative side effects of efficiency policies and strategies that ended up taking back the environmental gains they had permitted\" [16]. The expected gain \"rebounds\" as a result of behavioral and systemic reactions in a complex economy [18]. In general terms, the efficiency strategy should not depend solely on technological change, but \"must always be accompanied by a sufficiency strategy\" [19]. Other authors have also provided reasons for such behavioral changes on the consumer side [20; 21; 22; 23]. All things considered, it is necessary to raise the general awareness of the rebound effects [24], including the limits of the idea, particularly at the macro level.