IT training for green initiative needed

15:30 2nd December 2008

A study by Local Government IT in Use magazine (LGITU) has been conducted in an effort to establish the extent of green IT measures being introduced within the public sector.

Almost all Local Area Agreements (LAA) have expressed a commitment to the implementation of green initiatives and 96 per cent of those questioned said that their organisation understood the importance of fulfilling this requirement.

However, only 30 per cent said that IT training was offered in their department to specifically introduce green IT practices and 70 per cent said they were not sure how a change in working practices would be beneficial to the environment.

These findings serve to highlight the importance of IT training within the public sector to address knowledge gaps.

LGITU editor, Helen Olsen, commented: "An organisation that both greens its ICT and uses technology to enable green ways of working will be in a win-win situation in terms of delivering environmental sustainability and at the same time reducing costs in transformed service delivery."

Last year (October 2007), Gartner introduced the concept of Green IT and urged chief information officers to take action to reduce a company's carbon footprint.