The government has set its central department CIOs with the
challenge of reducing the carbon emissions their departments
produce. It has set a target for central departments to be
carbon neutral by 2012.
In its
Greening Government ICT strategy, launched yesterday, the
government outlined 18 steps that CIOs should take. These range
from activity as simple as making sure staff turn off PCs after
work to carrying out more complicated audits of the energy use of
datacentres.
Tom Watson, minister for transformational government, said, "It
is essential that we start off by getting the basics right. This
[report] is a positive first step but CIOs have to do the tough
things."
He said the government will monitor just how well CIOs perform.
"Tools are being developed to keep track of these targets and the
information will be shared."
The central
government's strategy will initially focus on changing working
practices but will evolve to recommend the use of energy-efficient
technology.
The advice, within the Greening Government ICT report, is for
departments to take advantage of what the government describes as
"quick wins".
"These are things that do not cost any money but save money,"
said government
CIO John Suffolk. "There are a lot of things that people can do
that are quite simple." The time is now for action and not
analysis, he says.
The longer term goals include the introduction of energy re-use
systems, virtualisation technology and the introduction of thin
client computing.
Suffolk said although this type of development is more
complicated it need not be expensive. "If you talk to the
virtualisation suppliers they said you get a pay back within a
year."
The government will then look at using technology to make
savings in other areas. These include technology for video
conferencing to save people having to go to meetings which will
reduce the emissions related to travelling by car, or mobile
technology to allow people to work from home.
John Higgins, director general at IT industry trade body
Intellect, warned that it is important to ensure that technology is
not used to "give a new lease of life to carbon inefficient
things."
He said by introducing technologies to cut carbon in other areas
the carbon footprint of IT will inevitable increase but this will
be offset by a larger proportional reduction in other areas.
Some government CIOs are already well into strategies to reduce
their carbon emissions. These include software as a service to
reduce the hardware requirements and renegotiating with suppliers
to reduce the regularity of refreshes.
"Cloud computing is on the horizon which means hardware is less
critical," said Chris Chant, CIO at the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs.
Stephen Dunthorne, deputy CTIO at the Crown Prosecution Service
said, "We have changed our contracts with suppliers to extend the
use of technology with refreshes every five years rather than every
three years."
Greening Government ICT report: the basics
The simple first steps outlined in the Greening Government ICT
report include:
- Removing active screensavers, because a monitor left running
with an active screen saver uses the same amount of energy as when
the screen is in full use,
- Switching monitors to standby, with no active screensaver,
after five minutes of inactivity, which prevents a longer period of
wasted power,
- Shutting down PCs after office hours