Working in a public administration I see that mobile phones are bought in high quantities and generally with no fairness specific requirements.
I don’t know if there is something like a “fairness certification” but if it existed I’m sure that many public administration, expecially those more tied to the political level (e.g. the EU parliament), could be “nudged” to choose not to buy the cheapest models but the most fair.
The condition for this to happen is that the most fair should be identified through an objective evidence, like a certification from a standard organization.
Actually there is an ICT related certification with a level of requirements on fairness and that’s “TCO Certified”, see http://tcodevelopment.com/. And if you’re engaged in public procurement, probabaly the project “Electronics Watch” (http://electronicswatch.org/en) is of interest.
I work in electronics business.
Supposing I would buy Tantalium Capaciotors “War free” or semiconductors bounded with gold “War free” etc… where to find it?
And how to be sure they really do that ?
If I ask to my standard distributors usually they don’t konws nothing about!
Fairphone gets their conflict-free tantalum from Solutions for Hope. But actually I would contact Fairphone directly, I think they would be glad to share their knowledge about acquiring conflict minerals with your company!
B corporation is interesting for the community but doesn’t help procurement offices.
The product itself needs some clear “fair certification”.
Fairphone should encourage to bring such a certificate to life! As it would naturally improve sales of FPs, it has to be independent if Fairphone itself. But as Netherlands and the EU are all in all quite ethically interested institutions this should not be impossible to bring on the way. Where is the lobbying of Fairphone and its community?!
I’m just searching the forums for threads about working conditions at Hi-P and am quite disappointed as none is to be found - fairness seems not a big concern of the community…
Out oft my very own experience dealing with politicians and their IT requirements, they’ll want Iphones. Why? Heck do I know, but don’t you dare ro deliver anything else…
Well the objective is that iPhones also come with a (trustworthy and independent) fairness certification, I’d say!
Regarding IT requirements: At my job they use Microsoft Exchange as a mail server and I hear the IT department will only give access to iOS and Windows Phone (not to Android!) (and of course to the computers they configure themselves).* So IT departments apparently don’t like Android for business mail traffic.
* (We at our department use a separate POP3 mail server, which I can access, of course, with my FP1! ;))
@Stefan: I’m not familiar enough with the specifics either… but in our organisation it used to be the same. Since the introduction of ‘mobile iron’ though (https://www.mobileiron.com/en), iPhone/Android seems no longer to be so much of an issue anymore…
