Green dream fuels shift in Whitehall

Government IT is undergoing a major shift as Whitehall attempts to revolutionise its approach to green computing.

Two government departments - Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Highways Agency showcased their environmental credentials at the Green IT 08 event.

Government CIO John Suffolk also held up the Department for Work and Pensions as an exemplar of Green IT in the public sector, saying it had reduced its number of servers by 2,500, slashing its CO2 output by thousands of tonnes.

HMRC has about 100,000 PCs and 6,600 servers processing everything from tax returns to P45 applications for about 60 million people. And IBM has recently completed a review of the department's carbon management in IT, which has pinpointed various ways to cut emissions.

Philip Secretan, head of sustainable computing for the HMRC, outlined the changes, which include:

• Installing network cards to remotely control its PCs, allowing it to run its PCs 12 hours-per-day, 220 days-per-year, as opposed to 24 hours-per-day, 365 days-per-year.

• Rationalising its data centres through virtualisation - recently enabling a cluster of 260 servers to be replaced by just 24.

• Reducing paper usage by 20 per cent by setting printers to print on both sides of the paper.

• Replacing equipment less frequently.

• Increasing the ratio of staff to printers.

• Cutting down on equipment by using multifunction devices.

• Building fatter connections between its 300 offices to promote video conferencing and enable it to roll out VoIP.

Secretan said: "We are fast approaching the government's target of reducing CO2 emissions by 12.5 per cent by 2010.We have to make the capability available to our workforce to embrace sustainability."

HMRC outsources much of its IT infrastructure and Secretan said the HMRC was working to encourage green practice among its service providers.

Green IT from A to Z

Click on the links below to find out more...

A is for Abroad
B is for Blades
C is for Carbon footprint
D is for Data centres
E is for Energy sources
F is for Freecycle
G is for Government
H is for Homeworking
I is for Ice caps
J is for Jobs (Steve)
K is for Kilowatts
L is for Landfill
M is for Mercury
N is for Nanogeneration
O is for Offsetting
P is for Paperless office
Q is for Queen
R is for Recycling
S is for SmartPlanet.com
T is for Travel
U is for Upgrade
V is for Virtualisation
W is for WEEE
X is for Xmas
Y is for You
Z is for Zero emissions

Another department airing its green credentials was the Highways Agency (HA), which manages 4,696 miles of trunk roads and motorway carrying one third of all traffic in the UK.

Denise Plumpton, director of information for the HA, described the massive job of rationalising the sprawling IT infrastructure underpinning nine offices.

Plumpton said: "IT has a key role to play in meeting government targets on climate change."

The HA has replaced about 400 standalone devices such as printers and photocopiers with multifunction devices, and increased the printer-to-staff ratio from 1:4 to 1:25. It has also fitted network cards to allow unused PCs to be switched off, and is relying heavily on video conferencing for virtual meetings.

It is aiming to recycle 30 per cent of its waste and plans to extend the life of PCs beyond three years. It is also consolidating servers through virtualisation and implementing environmentally friendly PC disposal.

Plumpton added the HA was in talks with sat-nav providers about allowing drivers to access its latest information on the road network through the in-car devices, helping to reduce CO2 emissions from motorists.