The top chief information officers (CIOs) in Whitehall will deliver the first public sector green computing strategy to ministers in July.

The CIO Council was asked by then-Cabinet Office minister Gillian Merron last September to investigate ways to reduce the energy consumption of IT.

And government CIO John Suffolk said last week that the plan is almost complete.
“We are well advanced on the strategy,” he told delegates at the Green IT conference in London.

“There is more work to do, and it has to be announced in parliament before anywhere else, but it will come out this year.”

Suffolk said the priorities are to learn from what others are doing well, and to focus on the easy steps first.

“The starting point is to encourage people to do the basics, because it is a big behavioural shift,” he said.

“You must take the ‘low-hanging fruit’, learn from people, and don’t reinvent the wheel.”

But going green ultimately comes down to cash, he said.

“You have to do a risk assessment that says: where am I going to invest my money and where will I get a return? Part of that is the green agenda,” added Suffolk.

Green strategy needs to be driven by the needs of the organisation, said David Tebbutt, programme director at analyst Freeform Dynamics.

“Perhaps the sheen is beginning to go off green and it is becoming part of business. This has to be for the good,” he said.

• Click here to listen to a podcast of Computing interviewing John Suffolk about green IT