UK Greening Government Report

The UK Government have released "Greening Government: ICT Annual Report" (UK Cabinet Office, 2 July 2012). This 19 page report is available in PDF, Word, and ODT formats, but curiously not as an ordinary web page (which would be more useful). Unfortunately the document has not been well designed and more than half of the space is taken up with an excessively large photograph of John Taylor, CIO Ministry of Defence.

The document reports on progress of implementation of the October 2011 strategy detailed in:

1. Greening Government: ICT Strategy
2. Green ICT Maturity Model
3. Green ICT Roadmap,
4. Green ICT Workbook
5. Green ICT Case-Studies

All UK department reported they have action the strategy. Of these, 12 Departments completed the maturity assessment, including the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Defence. The average Green Maturity was assessed at 2.4 (below the target of 3).

Here are some excerpts from the report:

Contents

Foreword 3

1 Introduction 4

2 Key Highlights 4

3 Key Challenges 6

4 Progress on Green ICT Commitments 8

5 Maturity Model Assessment 10

6 Roadmap Assessment 11

7 Case Studies 14

8 Forward Look 16 ...

Maturity Assessment

The Green ICT Maturity Assessment gives a measure of how well Government departments are adopting Green ICT standards and principles into their processes and practices. Twelve (12) Government Departments completed the maturity assessment, including three of the largest departments (The Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and The Ministry of Defence) which between them account for the largest proportion of ICT energy usage across Government. They achieved a level of Green ICT Maturity ²of 2.6 compared with the average across all departments of 2.4. Overall four (4) departments are already at or above the target for an average level of maturity of 3.

Roadmap Assessment

Twelve(12) Government Departments completed the Green ICT Roadmap. Six (6) departments reported achievement of five (5) or more of the fourteen Key Target Outcomes (KTOs) on the Roadmap, with eight (8) departments already reporting work in progress towards achieving the target of ten (10) or more by 2015. An estimated 232,000 tCO₂³ emissions has been saved with an estimated cost saving across government of £1.262m over twelve (12) months to end March 2012 from adopting and embedding Greener ICT practices and principles.

Green ICT Metrics

Three (3) Green ICT Metrics and Milestones were incorporated into the Government ICT Strategy Implementation Plan (SIP) These metrics gave a measure of the Government Data Centre Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) level (indicating the proportion of the overall energy taken by a data centre that is required to cool it), energy consumption cost and volume of tCO₂ of its data centres.

Across ten (10) Government Departments submitting returns, the average PUE for data centres was estimated at 1.87. Government expects to move to a PUE of 1.5 or better as data centres are rationalised. Those departments with high PUE values, greater than 1.5 are already working to put in place key data centre energy saving programmes to reduce power for cooling and thereby the PUE. The total energy consumed by the data centres used by these departments is estimated to emit some 101,000 tCO₂ at a cost to the Government of £17.5m.

Six (6) Government Departments (including the three largest) reported 100% adoption, in their existing contracts for ICT services, of Government Buying Standards (GBS) for sustainable purchase of ICT assets, where these exist, for the type of ICT asset being purchased.

Data Centres

The Government is committed to rationalising the number of data centres across its estate. In the short term the Government ICT Strategy Hosting Consolidation work stream is identifying and taking tactical opportunities for consolidating and sharing existing data centre and hosting services, predominantly within departments at this stage, thereby realising energy, cost and carbon emission savings. In parallel it is developing data centre standards as part of a new government Hosting procurement framework which is due to be in place by end Dec 2012.

In support of this work, departments are asked to endorse the EU Code of Conduct for Energy Efficient Data Centres and adopt its best practices to reduce PUE, energy consumption and costs for all their data centres.

Partnerships

The GDU has members of academia and representatives of the wider public sector as part of its membership. Also recognising the need for greater industry alignment, innovation and engagement, the GDU is engaged with suppliers and the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) community through the Intellect Green Government Group. ⁴ The GDU will seek to build on these partnerships and alliances over the coming years. Finally, in order to ensure coherence across Government, the GDU has forged strong links with a number of other Government ICT Strategy work streams, namely those for End User Devices, Procurement, Cloud, Hosting and Capability. ...