Defence Data Centers Carbon Footprint Problem

In a speech to the Lowy Institute for International Policy "Mending Defence’s Broken Backbone", Nick Warner, Secretary of the Australian Department of Defence singled out the large number of corporate data centres as wasting energy and creating a large carbon footprint. Unfortunately the ICT strategy outlined by the Secretary later in the speech does not address these problems. Defence needs to specifically aim to reduce the number of data centres and reduce energy consumption. Broad strategies to improve governance and review sourcing are not sufficient. The Secretary could direct the Defence CIO to have at least 10% of senior staff trained in Green ICT this year, so that the Department has some staff who know what to do and how to do it. The Defence CIO could be directed to reduce the number of data centres by 20 per year, starting in 2009, until the total number is reduced from 200 to 20. The Defence CIO could be directed toreduce power consumption at data centres by 5% per year, starting in 2009, until a target of a 50% reduction is reached.

... Most large corporations run between three to fi ve data centres. We’ve got 200, all of them power-hungry and giving us a large carbon footprint.

Our strategy for fixing IT focuses on four key areas—improving service delivery; improving governance of the whole IT enterprise; reducing the time it takes to deliver new IT capabilities; and reviewing our sourcing strategies.

While this list is probably typical of any agency or corporation we have taken a deliberate 'back to basics' approach.

On the service delivery side, based on feedback from customers, our Chief Information Officer has identified the ‘top ten irritants’ that he and his people are working to resolve.

On the governance side, we’re overhauling the process of how we set priorities and assign resources—replacing a bottom-up, uncoordinated approach with one led by CDF and me that looks across the enterprise and takes the hard decisions about where investment will get the most return.

We’re reducing the time it takes to introduce new IT capabilities from literally years to 90 days. We simply can’t continue to deliver obsolete technology to support our war fighters or our business reform efforts.

And we’re trying to be much smarter about how we use our signifi cant buying power. Over time, we’ll replace a multiplicity of IT contracts with a smaller number of larger, more costeffective ones. ...

From: "Mending Defence’s Broken Backbone", Nick Warner, Secretary of the Australian Department of Defence, Lowy Institute for International Policy, 10 June 2008 (audio also available). Reprinted in the Australian Defence Force Journal (Issue 177, November/December 2008, Defence Magazine (Issue 9 2007/08 )