Gartner

Government CIOs need to spearhead Green IT initiatives

Andrea Di Maio, Research Vice President, Gartner, on why it is integral for CIOs and operations managers in government organizations to plan and execute their Green IT strategies well

As businesses in many industries use environmental proactivity as a marketing tool, governments also can earn some political capital by appearing environment-conscious. By 2010, environment-related issues will be among the top five IT management concerns for many state and local government organizations. Therefore, it is imperative for strategic planners, CIOs, CTOs and operations managers in government IT organizations to understand early on which types of demand they will face from Green IT strategies or environmental actions in general.

IT-intensive initiatives to help the environment

Governments—especially at the state and local levels, where there is often more direct or politically sensitive responsibility for the quality of the environment—will engage in IT-intensive projects that aim to reduce air and water pollution. Examples include: 

• Environmental monitoring. This involves data collection and analysis about air and water quality and other relevant environmental measures, especially in densely populated areas. This is usually performed through a variety of fixed and mobile measurement stations, and is meant to be consumed by authorities, the scientific community and the public at large. There will be greater demand to establish similar systems where they are not in place. Where they already exist, their functionality will be improved to influence traffic management or toll pricing decisions in real-time, as well as to provide greater visibility to citizens. 
• Congestion charge programs. After the successes in Singapore, London and Stockholm, several cities in the world are considering or planning to deploy automatic pay-toll systems based on optical recognition of driving plates or radio frequency identification (RFID). New systems will seek road tolls that change, depending on time of the day and pollution levels. Although these large projects usually are developed and operated by external service providers, their cost and risk level place more stringent requirements on the process maturity of government IT organizations.
• Fleet management systems (FMSs). To optimize the dispatch and management of vehicles such as waste collection trucks, local police cars and public buses, local government transportation departments (or public transportation companies) will deploy FMSs based on Geographic Positioning System (GPS) or cellular technology aimed at more efficiently managing resources and reducing fuel consumption and emissions. Where these services can be provided by private enterprises, the government will exercise—at the very least—a supervisory and monitoring role.
• Government building automation. Reducing energy consumption in buildings by better managing lighting, heating and air conditioning will require significant investments in sensors and sensor networks. The use of power line Ethernet will intensify to reduce cabling problems in existing government buildings.
• Alternative energy sources. Use of alternative energy sources in government buildings as appropriate—from solar panels to teleheating—will put constraints on IT service levels and operations.
• Teleworking. An obvious remedy to environmental issues is to let people work from home. Forced to lead by example, and thanks to the advancement in e-government, many agencies will be in a position to support and encourage teleworking. While the full systems analysis of the impact of teleworking on the environment has not been undertaken, it is an obvious strategy. However, it should be combined with education of employees in how they can improve the energy efficiency of their own homes.
• Online services. Part of the value of electronic services is to eliminate the necessity for people to drive to government premises to obtain services or fulfill administrative obligations. Although the reduction in traffic that this would bring is probably negligible, encouraging the use of online services is nevertheless a politically sound move, and can have beneficial cost-reduction effects in the long run. On the other hand, reducing the physical shipment of paper forms will have a demonstrable positive impact. At this stage of e-government maturity, we can expect more governments mandating the use of online services by putting a price tag on offline channels.
• Changes to tax and revenue systems. Fiscal laws are a powerful way to change behaviors. Several countries and cities have already introduced new environment-related taxes or changes in the way taxes are calculated, taking into account polluting potential and environmental impact. Relevant taxes can be fixed at the national as well as the local level. Tax and revenue applications will need to be amended to take such changes into account.
• Waste management. The use of better planning and resource management systems to optimize waste collection and disposal can have a measurable impact on environmental issues; so can location-based technologies (including GPS and RFID) and image processing applications to locate and handle waste.

“Greening” government IT

Besides new projects and applications, Green IT will affect many aspects of IT management and operations:

• Consolidation and shared services. The move toward greater consolidation and the use of shared services in government is already happening as a consequence of cost pressures, as well as to enable individual agencies to be more focused on their policy mandates. Green IT will add to this, because centralized/ shared data centers and networks are most likely going to be better managed from an environmental impact perspective, by leveraging virtualization, better utilization and capacity management. Consolidation of IT procurement will also ease the selection of vendors that meet Green IT requirements and better manage equipment disposal in compliance with relevant  regulations. 
• A boost to open source. Government organizations may try to use less-powerful machines, or delay refurbishment to postpone disposal; this will strengthen the case for open source. At the same time, parties that are more sensitive to environmental issues will often provide political support to open source. 
• Architectural choice. The objective of reducing energy consumption and procuring devices with lower environmental impact may shift the pendulum toward thin-client architectures, which is also as a consequence of greater centralization. 
• IT investment planning and management. Environmental impact, energy consumption and compliance with Green IT policies will become significant decision criteria for IT investment. Such criteria will appear in public value of IT frameworks and, where they exist already, they will be assigned higher weights. In geographies or government tiers where green issues are a top concern, new models will emerge to evaluate, demonstrate and communicate the environmental value of IT (EVIT). Such analysis may not change what gets done, but will affect how things get done.

Andrea Di Maio is a Vice President and Distinguished Analyst in Gartner Research, where he focuses on the public sector, with particular reference to e-government strategies, Web 2.0, the business value of IT, open-source software, Green IT and the impact of technology on the future of government.