Government wants green IT
Most public sector IT managers have never heard of government green IT plan
03 Jul 2009, Bryan Glick, Computing
Sixty per cent of public sector IT managers are not aware of the government’s green IT strategy, according to research.
And of those who are aware of the year-old Greening Government plan, two-thirds say they are concerned about their ability to achieve the targets, which include public sector IT becoming carbon neutral within four years.
But the survey of 173 IT managers by environmental charity Global Action Plan and vendor Cisco, suggests that 70 per cent of respondents still feel green IT is important.
However, only 13 per cent of those polled measure the carbon footprint of their technology, and just 22 per cent have set internal green IT targets.
Steve Palmer, president of public sector user group Socitm, said greater understanding and collaboration is needed to take advantage of green IT innovations.
"The economic downturn provides an enormous opportunity for maximising the potential that IT has for delivering high quality, low carbon services,” he said.
“Most public sector bodies know they cannot afford to continue as normal and will need to restructure the way that services are delivered. Green IT initiatives cannot just reduce travel, enable flexible working and reduce energy consumption; they can also improve the quality and delivery of frontline services.”
Gartner vice president Rakesh Kumar said the public sector needs to share best practice more effectively.
“Where government is successfully implementing green IT schemes it should be making the effectiveness of these transparent through case studies and wider promotional activities to demonstrate what is possible to other large-scale IT users,” he said.
“Government needs to increase the level of transparency around the effectiveness of green IT initiatives. This will help to build collaboration, reduce duplication and embed good practice.”
The Cisco report recommends that government use its purchasing power to push the use of more environmentally-friendly systems, and fund the use of external experts to help public sector bodies achieve the aims of the Greening Government strategy.
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Green targets or spending cuts?
Targeting major reductions in carbon emissions from data centres within the public sector and proposed cuts in public spending go together like chalk and cheese. Everyone should now know that there are easy fixes that can help towards more efficient data centre operations such as fitting blanking plates, hot aisle/cold aisle separation, increasing server inlet air temperatures etc.
However, from the survey results I doubt if these well publicised actions are that well known - let alone acted upon! To help you out on365 has come up with 15 quick ways to improving data centre efficiency- http://www.on365.co.uk/Data_Centre_Optimisation/15_Quick_Fixes_to_Improve_Data_Centre_Efficiency.aspx.
These tips are only the starting point. To make major inroads into reducing the carbon footprint will require significant investment. Whether this is at the physical infrastructure level, such as complete and physical separation of hot and cold air, the use of free-cooling coils in chillers or at the computational level in terms of server/SAN virtualisation, a government operated private cloud - money, and plenty of it, will be required. Just the management of data centre efficiency will require the government committing to big sums. Global commercial organisations such as Google, HP, IBM and eBay have published some very aggressive PUE results (down as low as 1.1) for some of their data centres. OK these might not be their most important or business critical sites but the numbers are a target. They show that it can be done. Some involve radical measures like locating the DC in Iceland or not bothering with UPS protection but they all took investment. Obviously Government has little choice but to cut public spending. I guess it will come down to which is the most important, the treasuries debt management targets or the Governments green targets.
Posted by: Chris Smith 07 Jul 2009