# A Novel ICT Framework for Sustainable Development Goals
## 4 Design Principles for the ICT Framework  
The actors that participate in addressing SDGs include intergovernmental organizations, governments, enterprises, non-profit organizations, various civil society communities, and individuals, pursuing interests at different scales with respect to the time, space, and organization, as well as in diverse political, economic, socio-cultural, and environmental surroundings [127; 128]. Governance and decision-making processes concerning SDGs are shaped not only by a large number of normative rules and regulations including laws, policies, agreements and technical standards, but also by administrative, commercial, professional, cultural, ethical and interpersonal practices [127; 129]. Moreover, governance and decision-making processes are influenced by relationships of power, authority, and cooperation at multiple levels [127; 130]. There are four different types of goods classified according to excludability and rivalrousness: common resources, public goods, private goods, and club goods. The governance of common resources is shaped by various actors at different spatial, temporal, and decision making scales. However, jurisdictional boundaries within the spatial, temporal, and decision making scales do not correspond with both the biophysical and spatial/temporal characteristics of common resources [127; 131]. Addressing the sustainable development goals is guided by several principles. In general, sustainability could be considered a \"thick\" normative concept [132; 133; 134], i.e., it carries both normative and descriptive content. However, the critical political documents on this concept [135; 136; 137] have clearly contained the normative meaning and take sustainability as a guiding principle. SDGs are widely understood as something positive; each and every country should be committed and work vigorously towards achieving the objectives disclosed in these goals. Hence, we believe that the principles suggested here \"ought to proceed\" [138] in order to achieve the SDGs by their target date of 2030. We suggest four design principles for the ICT framework provided here, see Figure 3:  
* _Principle 1_: SDGs performance should be shaped by three disciplines: governance science, sustainability science, and data science;
* _Principle 2_: SDGs implementation should be triggered by various actors at different spatial scales (e.g., farm, local, region, state, national, international), temporal scales (e.g., daily, monthly, annual) and decision making scales (e.g., individual, group, institution);
* _Principle 3_: SDGs governance should be emphasized by various governance theories (including adaptive governance, collaborative governance, network governance, and so on) triggering actions across many levels and involving actors from multiple sectors; and
* _Principle 4_: SDGs implementation should be influenced by the human behavior. In the last five decades, scholars have built a solid field of sustainability science by working on ecological systems, socioeconomic systems, and linked socio-ecological systems. From the analysis of a variety of common resources, scholars have documented that community-based governance systems support the existence of common resources over the range from 100 years to 1000 years, surviving natural disasters as well as various social, political, and economical changes. How the vast body of knowledge of governance models already accumulated in the field of sustainability science can be transferred to SDGs? The principle 1 provides an answer to this question. Despite the enormous success of the social-ecological systems in addressing governance of common resources, this approach has not been adopted for SDGs and is lacking empowerment of citizens in addressing global challenges. Moreover, the approach has not fully adopted machine learning methods and tools for knowledge discovery and decision making tailored for SDGs. Machine learning methods have been recently used to track progress toward certain SDGs [139].