Sustainable IT Bulletin

Over the last couple of years the Forum has regularly discussed sustainable IT and various green strategies and issues that have an impact on members. This bulletin brings together a number of resources and distills them into one, easy to read document which lays out current corporate IT thinking on sustainability.

The classic statement on sustainability and development made in the 1987 Brundtland Report still rings true: 'sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need'. Fundamentally, sustainability is about the future, not the short term.

It is striking that in the Corporate IT Forum's Reality Checker on sustainable IT (carried out in February 2010) the majority reason for executing 'green' initiatives was to change the culture of corporate organisations: the lived experience that is made up of the working practices in today's changing businesses and public sector institutions.

IT has worked hard to minimise waste and embed the 'green' ethic into its procurement, lifecycle and operations processes. But it has a further - potentially greater - part to play in enabling sustainability across the whole organisation: automating policy, managing systems and facilities, supporting communications and communities.

At the Efficient Enterprise workshop to be held on 03 June, the Corporate IT Forum is joining forces with the Environment Agency of England & Wales to deliver a workshop that offers senior business and IT managers the chance to take on board perspectives and approaches from across the enterprise.

This Bulletin is offered as part of the background to that event. It compares the Forum's Green IT census of 2008, with this year's Sustainable IT Reality Checker , and it distils recent discussion within the Forum around eco-efficient IT. The main point it pulls out and emphasizes is that 'green IT' should be seen as one element within a remaking of corporate organisations so that they become more sustainable.