By Nick Heath, 16 July 2008 17:19
NEWS
A Whitehall department wants to scrap desktop and handheld computers in favour of lone laptops.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) hopes to cut power bills and CO2 emissions by introducing one laptop per worker.
Defra permanent secretary Helen Ghosh unveiled the plan as part of its Renew IT Programme to the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, as revealed in its recent report.
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Ghosh said: "One of the things we are doing through our Renew IT Programme is to reduce the number of pieces of IT equipment which any individual can have.
"I will feel this very much myself because at the moment I have a fixed PC in the office, a laptop I use at home and a BlackBerry, and in the new world I will be able to have one item, which is a laptop which I shall carry."
She added: "We are restricting in Defra the number of items which individuals can have and also making sure we are not over-providing within our offices."
She said the department was also looking at sourcing machines through sustainable supply chains and achieving CO2 savings by measures such as turning off over-complicated screensavers and introducing automatic standby on more machines.
Second permanent under secretary of the Ministry of Defence, Sir Ian Andrews, told the committee the ministry would reduce the number of machines through the Defence Information Infrastructure project to rationalise about 300 systems.
Government CIO John Suffolk is expected to launch a national green IT strategy at the end of this month.
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Guy Reynolds
Yet more ways for faceless civil servants to loose our confidential information and get away with it.
2. Rob
Desktop PC's are more upgradable than laptops, so in a sense will last longer than a laptop.
It's also painfully obvious that you can't trust government lacky not to leave their damn laptop on a [insert public transport or pub of your choice].
If your going to issue laptops to all government then lets throw caution to the wind and opt in for ID cards and tell Brown he can stay forever.
3. James Skilton
In reply to Rob, when did you ever hear of a govt department upgrading its desktop estate? They sit there for 10 years until they are completely obselete, then get replaced in a hugely expensive exercise involving no smooth upgrade path.
As for laptops for all, they'd better get encrypted discs and multi-factor authentication for everyone to ensure they don't lose any confidential information when they inevitabley lose the machines.
As for power saving, what about all the mains transformers that will sit there all night keeping the space under everyone's desk nice and warm, even if they switch their laptops off.
4. RM
Good news for identity theft operatives & laptop thieves.
Not such good news for the general public who will be
a) footing the bill for stolen laptop replacements
b) suffering the problems of identity theft
Cynical? No, just realistic based on past events.
5. Malcolm Campbell
Guy Reynolds said "Comment
Yet more ways for faceless civil servants to loose our confidential information and get away with it."
Another opportunity for someone who has no idea about the Civil Service to criticise it and make a bad grammatical mistake - ever heard of cut and paste and spell check Guy ???