Greening the public sector

STUNG by criticism from the federal Auditor-General over the lack of progress in greening public offices, the Australian Government Information Management Office has rushed out a list of "quick wins" in energy savings for agencies to follow. Priority actions include automatic shutdown of desktops and laptops after hours, replacing active screensavers with black screens and metering hardware power consumption. "All agencies should implement the quick wins within their environments," an AGIMO spokesman said. "This is a first step towards reducing the impact of government ICT operations, and will build towards an integrated sustainability plan."

The new green targets mirror the recommendations of the Australian National Audit Office in its Green Office Procurement and Sustainability report. The report says the public sector has "considerable work to do" through procurement practices to achieve the government's goal of greater sustainability, with many issues identified in a 2005 audit still unresolved. It agrees with the Gershon Review's assessment that there is "a significant disconnect between the government's overall sustainability agenda, and its ability to understand and manage energy costs and the carbon footprint of its ICT estate".

On the positive side, the audit shows the Defence Department has identified savings of up to $5million a year after piloting an automatic after-hours shutdown of PCs, which slashed power use by 25 per cent. Medicare found an extra $100,000 a year in savings by cutting off monitors after 15minutes of non-use, on top of $237,000 savings from a PC shutdown policy. But only 48 per cent of agencies have adopted the policy.

The report says all agencies should require energy efficiency and environmental performance standards for new technology, and introduce power management policies, including the automatic shutdown of monitors and PCs when not in use. It calls for energy savings of up to 33 per cent in data centres through better design and upgraded infrastructure after a review found air-conditioning and power supply back-up used up to 78 per cent of data centre energy.

The report supports desktop virtualisation, which would replace traditional PCs with low-power thin client devices. An Environment Department server virtualisation trial cut power costs by $15,000 a year, but the real savings were in deployment costs. "The total cost of implementation was $116,000 cheaper than a physical server equivalent, at $524,000 compared with $640,000," the report says. "And the ability to easily expand or decrease system capacity is vastly improved, with the deployment of an additional virtual server costing around $2000, compared with at least $20,000 for a physical server."

The ANAO report notes the lack of progress in developing national standards for management of electronic waste, and calls on agencies to give it priority. "Around 100,000 desktop computers and laptops are replaced by federal agencies every year, and a significant proportion will end up in the waste stream," the report says. "Only one-quarter of the agencies surveyed reported their contracts included product stewardship or safe disposal requirements for obsolete equipment."