Green Government

I came across an article this week highlighting that both HMRC and the Highways Agency were highlighting their green credentials at the recent Green IT event. The Department for Work and Pensions also had its green credentials promoted, by Government Chief Information Officer John Suffolk, following the Department’s reduction of servers by 2,500, and the subsequent reduction in its CO2.

IBM have recently reviewed the Treasury’s carbon management in IT, and changes such as rationalising datacenters through virtualisation, and installing network cards to remotely control PCs, mean the Department is now on track to meet the Government’s target of reducing CO2 emissions by 12.5 percent by 2010.

The Highways Agency has tackled this challenge by replacing standalone devices, for instance printers and photocopiers, with multi-function devices. Interestingly, the Highways Agency is also in discussion with sat-nav providers, exploring whether to allow drivers to access its latest information on the road network through in-car devices, thus reducing CO2 emissions from motorists.

Such promotion follows the 2007 Sustainable Development in Government Report, which assesses the performance of central government operations against the targets of the Framework for Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate, or (SOGE). In that, HMRC received an overall rating of three stars out of five, and the Highways Agency were not included. However, the HMRC’s performance was not unexceptional - of the 21 government departments, 12 reported poor or no progress on their targets.

Given the significant carbon emissions that an office can produce, looking at the energy consumption of IT systems is a crucial prerequisite of making significant reductions. The reporting and promotion of any green achievements by Government Departments could be one way to encourage this.