Thin clients find slim pickings at Defra

One of Whitehall's largest departments has rejected thin client technology - less than a year after it was identified as a way of greening government IT.

Minister for farming and the environment, Jane Kennedy, revealed the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had decided against using thin client technology, where lightweight, low power machines access applications held and run on central servers.

Defra felt the extra cooling that would be needed in central server halls would suck up too much power, Kennedy said.

Replacing power hungry desktop PCs with thin clients was flagged as one way of reducing energy consumption in the government's Greening ICT Strategy, the recently published Cabinet Office guidelines on how Whitehall can become carbon neutral by 2012.

Kennedy told Parliament in a written parliamentary answer yesterday: "Defra carefully considered the promotion of 'thin' clients, which are centrally managed computers with most of the function of the system located in a central server room.

"However, evidence to date has shown that the increased electricity consumption of these server rooms (e. g. through the air conditioning needed to cool the room) renders this technology less attractive than previously thought from an energy efficiency perspective."

Defra is more progressive when it comes to home working, with 11,520 staff registered and equipped for remote access.

Kennedy added the department has also mandated a set of minimum environmental standards for commonly purchased products, including IT.