Under the patronage of the President of the Northern Technical University, Prof. Dr. Alia Abbas Ali Al-Attar, and under the supervision of the Dean of the Health and Medical Technical College in Kirkuk, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Yawuz Nouroddin, the Quality Assurance, and University Performance Division organized a workshop entitled “The Role of Information Technology in Achieving Sustainable Development”, the lecture was delivered by the Assistant Professor Dr. Siham Shakur Obaid and attended by a number of teachers and members of the college.

The workshop dealt with:

• How human life is closely and directly linked to the natural environment in which he lives and depends on it. Industrial development and the information and communication revolution have contributed to a large extent to the deterioration of the environment, the depletion of natural resources, and the widening of the economic and technical gap between industrialized and developing countries.
• Sustainable development is considered one of the most important societal challenges in the twenty-first century and aims to develop cities, communities, businesses, and industries to meet the needs of humanity at present while preserving natural resources for future generations to meet their needs.
• One of the global trends that have significant impacts on sustainable development is the rapid development of information technology (IT), where the innovation of revolutionary technologies, particularly the Internet, and related services, led to the emergence of the so-called “information revolution” or “the third industrial revolution”.

The workshop concluded that the innovative use of information technology provides alternatives to travel and the transport of goods, and a major shift toward production, consumption, trade, and services that use fewer resources. These changes can significantly reduce the environmental impact of industrial and commercial activities and thus contribute to sustainable development. Information technology can contribute significantly to reducing waste, as electronic services can replace physical products, which later accumulate in the form of waste that is difficult to dispose of quickly and effectively, for example, paper waste can be reduced by relying on electronic documents, and services Mail and electronic signature, and e-commerce can reduce the harmful effects produced by traditional stores, both in terms of energy consumption, or waste resulting from the operation of these stores, that the energy consumption of commercial buildings for each book sold, is 16 times more in traditional stores compared to electronic stores.

Another factor that works to reduce the use of commercial buildings, and thus reduce expenses and reduce energy consumption in them, is working remotely, accomplishing tasks and communicating with the administration through the Internet, taking advantage of online communication services, and using applications and cloud storage services, an approach that is now followed Many commercial companies, given its economic importance in the first place, and the significant savings it achieves in the costs of equipping and establishing buildings, and saving energy for them, in addition to the increase in productivity that may be caused by working in a more comfortable and quiet place for remote workers.