e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 14 - Wikiversity version

In Part 13 I prepared the remaining content for a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. The Wikiversity, an educational equivalent to the Wikipedia, has an Information Technology school, so I added and entery for "Green IT" and "Introduction to Green IT" based on the material I prepared for the ACS course. I am unclear as to exacltly how the Wikiversioty functions, if it does function at all, but thought it might be worth making a contrbution.

The Wikiversity does not seem to have reached the point at which there is enough content to attract people to add more. Many of the entries are only stubs: with just a heading waiting for someone to fill in the details. Also there seems to be a lack of integration with the Wikipedia. You can use the same user-id for updating the Wikipedia and Wikiversity, but you have to add an external reference from the Wikiversity to the Wikipedia. The result is that it is difficult to use the Wikipedia content to build the Wikiversity.

Can ICT Professionals Audit the Carbon Schemes?

An interesting point I came across in preparing a Green ICT course is that who does the auditing of CO2 emission schemes is still up in the air (pun intended). The Australian Department of Climate Change issued a Draft National Carbon Offset Standard, 19 December 2008, along with a Discussion Paper and an External Audit Consultation Paper (October 2008). I have summarised these for week 12 of the course on "compliance audit".

The audit paper points out that a multi-disciplinary team with individuals from different professions is likely to be needed and accreditation against ISO 14065:2007 is not directly suited. So neither financial auditors, nor environmental experts will have the field to themselves. The paper emphasises the people need to subscribe to a code of ethics and the like. So ACS members (and of comparable bodies) who are required to subscribe to a code of ethics, have their indemnity insurance up to date and have done a Green ICT course may be suitable for audit teams.

ICT Predictions 2009

The Canberra Times newspaper included an item with predictions of what will happen with computers and telecommunications in 2009 ("Big loads in gloomy paths", Simon Grouse, Canberra Times, 5 January 2009). Here is a summary of mine (much the same as for 2008):

... Moore's law will result in the ICT spend reducing in 2009, while delivering more service.

Telcos will sell a lot of 3G wireless broadband accounts, with the price dropping significantly.

Small laptop "netbooks" ... costing $500 dominate the laptop market. Netbooks will come with 3G wireless built in and many will be sold on plans with a broadband account, like mobile phones. Netbooks with 3G will be routinely issued by employers to their staff for working away from the office and purchased by home users as a second home computer for use from the kitchen bench. ...

The National Broadband Network tender process will be cancelled and a new strategy incorporating wireless broadband ... will be announced ... as an "enhancement" to the policy. Telstra will get some of the business as a result, but not as much as it would like.

The attempt to rationalise the Government's existing servers into a few large data centres will be abandoned ... Instead ... new energyand space-efficient equipment ... will reduce the number of servers needed to one for each 50 existing servers and reduce the space needed to house them by 100 times.

The 10,000 m2 ... of large government data centre space the Gershon Report found in Canberra, will be reduced to about 100sgm. Private enterprise ... wanting to build large commercial data hosting services will be disappointed by the small size of the requirements.

Big screen iPhone-like smart phones will keep being released and by the end of 2009, some useful business applications will arrive to justify their purchase by business and government.

The Australian Computer Society's Green ICT course will become the internationally recognised standard certification for the industry. ICT professionals will start including energy and carbon emission estimates in their ICT plans. Many will go on to become the chief sustainability officer of their organisation, covering more than just computers. Promoted by climate change concerns, new hardware and software will result in a lower ICT budget for most organisations.

Due to the concentration of government jobs in Canberra, its poor public transport and child-minding shortages, the city will lead Australia in teleworking. ...

By mid-year the Government will have got its online policy consultation to work. ... public servants will find it more effective to submit proposals through this process than through ... internal committee systems. As a result most interdepartmental committees will become virtual ...

From: Big loads in gloomy paths, Simon Grouse, Canberra Times, 5 January 2009

Also quoted were: Ann Stewart, Australian Government Chief Information Officer; Kevin Miller, IDC managing director, Pacific region; Kevin Noonan, Head of consulting, Intermedium; Ian Birks, Chief executive officer, Australian Information Industry Association; Brand Hoff, Founder of Tower Software and director of NICTA; David Bryant, Chair of the Canberra branch of the Australian Computer Society and Alex Zelinsky Director, CSIRO ICT Centre; Richard Harris, Vice-president research, Gartner Asia-Pacific; and Matthew Purcell, The Silicon Kid.

Screen Savers Waste Power

The article "Static Screens" (Popular Mechanics, January 2009) covers the issue of Phosphor burn-in well, but fails to suggest computer users set their screen saver to switch off the screen and save power. Old CT computer monitors suffer from burn-in when an image is left on the screen too long. Screen savers counter this by replacing the static image. However, a better option is to set the system to switch the monitor into low power mode, rather than having a moving pattern on the screen. This saves power and also further reduces wear on the screen's components. The US EPA Energy Star specification requires monitors to use no more than 2 watts in Sleep Mode.

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 13 - More Pragmatism

In Part 12 I discovered I had scheduled two week sevens as part of preparing a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. Having merged some of the topics so I had the required number of weeks for the course I got on with preparing the remaining content. This became progressively more difficult as I got to the more esoteric topics, such as quality management and auditing.

Also I asked my colleagues at the ANU to check the course details, which they proceeded to do in forensic detail. They found several errors in the first sentence. By the time they got to the end of the first paragraph I started to regret asking for comment, but these were all useful suggestions.

One frustration was that some of the standards used for ICT and environmental purposes are formal ISO ones. As a result the text of the standards are not freely available, ISO and its national counterparts, such as Standards Australia, sell copies of the standards. These standards are therefore not freely available online. There are many references to the standards, but little of use for students trying to understand them.

Another frustration continues to be material which is freely available, but in large PDF files. The Australian Government has provided the full text of a proposed Draft National Carbon Offset Standard, but it is tacked on the end of a discussion document in a PDF file.

However, hopefully many of those frustrations are now behind me. The revised Green ICT Strategies Course Outline is done, along with twelve weeks of content, two assignments and readings:

Weekly outline

	Green ICT Strategies (GICTS) is a new subject in the Computer Professional Education Program of the Australian Computer Society. The officially approved course description is available on the ACS web site, for which enrolments are open until 11 January 2009 for Study Period 1 (18 January to 19 April 2009). This is a working draft of the course material for 2009. For background on why the course is being prepared, see: "Educating ICT Professionals on Energy Efficiency". For details on how, see: Green IT Strategies Course. Most material is being prepared under an open access licence. Contributions and comments are welcome. The ACS CPeP program is the first in the world to be globally accredited. Enrolments can be in the Green ICT subject alone, or as part of the full CPe Program. Credit towards Graduate Diploma and Master courses are offered by university articulation. News forum Chatroom Terminology List Green ICT Strategies Course Outline Blog about the background to the e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies
	18 January 24 January Week 1: Introduction to Green ICT Strategies Understand environmental, social and business context for sustainability, and overview of background, boundaries. Readme 1st - Week 1 Work Notes - Week 1 Workload Assessment Seminar - Week 1 Discussion Questions - Week 1 Friday Message
	25 January 31 January Week 2: The Global ICT Footprint Estimate the embodied carbon and the footprint from use of telecommunications, data centres and desktop PCs. Read me 1st - Week 2 Work Notes - Week 2 Seminar - Week 2 Discussion Questions - Week 2 SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age
	1 February 7 February Week 3: Enabling ICT Investigate how ICT systems can reduce energy and materials use by improving the efficiency of business systems by replacing the movement of goods with information (dematerialisation), improve the efficiency of machines (smart motor systems), logistics, buildings and grids. Read me 1st - Week 3 Work notes - Week 3 Seminar - Week 3 Discussion Questions - Week 3
	8 February 14 February Week 4: Energy saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment Computers and telecommunications equipment contributes about 2% to greenhouse gas emissions. Look at how data centres and client equipment can be made more efficient. Read me 1st - Week 4 Work Notes - Week 4 Seminar - Week 4 Discussion Questions - Week 4
	15 February 21 February Week 5: Materials Use Energy reduction is only part of making a Green ICT system, there is also the issue of use of materials and hazardous substances. Read me 1st - Week 5 Work Notes - Week 5 Seminar - week 5 Discussion Questions - Week 5
	22 February 28 February Week 6: Methods and tools Ensure that appropriate methods and tools for the planning, development, operation, management and maintenance of systems are adopted and used effectively throughout the organisation. Read me 1st - Week 6 Work notes - week 6 Seminar - Week 6 Discussion Questions - Week 6
	1 March 7 March Week 7: Business process improvement Recommend alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches. ICT has the potential to provide significant environmental improvements, by replacing energy and materials consuming processes with more efficient ICT ones. How do you analyse business processes to identify alternative solutions which reduce environmental impact, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches? Read me 1st - Week 7 Week 7 - Work notes Seminar - Week 7 Discussion Questions - Week 7
	8 March 14 March Week 8: Improving Data Centre Energy Efficiency Investigate how to implement and assess data centre efficiency. Read me 1st - Week 8 Work Notes - Week 8 Seminar - Week 8 Discussion Questions - Week 8 EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres
	15 March 21 March Week 9: Enterprise Architecture The business of business is business, so any environmental goals have to fit into the systems capability strategy which meets the strategic requirements of the business. How do you incorporate Green ICT into the models and plans to drive forward the strategy, taking advantage of opportunities to improve business performance, as well as environmental benefits? Read me 1st - Week 9 Work Notes - Week 9 Seminar - Week 9 - Enterprise Architecture Discussion Questions - Week 9
	22 March 28 March Week 10: Procurement Much of the environmental benefits come about by selecting the right products and services. How do you write ICT requirement documents to ensure that your hardware, software and services suppliers provide green products? Read me 1st - Week 10 Work Notes - Week 10 Seminar - Week 10 Discussion Questions - Week 10
	29 March 4 April Week 11: Energy Star Program and Quality Management Ensure that the processes for producing a product or service sustainability will do so to a consistent standard. Investigate the fit between US EPA's Energy Star Program and those of Quality Management Systems. Read me 1st - Week 11 Work Notes - Week 11 Seminar - Week 11 Discussion Questions - Week 11 Assignment 2 - Assessment Criteria
	5 April 11 April Week 12: Compliance audit Assess the conformity of corporate systems to environmental standards, such as ISO 14000 series of environment management standards, Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), and Energy Star Program. Read me 1st - Week 12 Seminar - Week 12 Draft National Carbon Offset Standard Discussion Questions - Week 12
	12 April 18 April Week 13: Review and discussion for assignment 2 - Prepare to go out and save the world Let us revisit the reasons we are studying Green ICT: to maximise positive environmental benefit and minimise the negative impact. What specific processes will you propose in Assignment 2, to improve energy efficiency and the use of materials in your organisation?

Australian broadband lagging OECD but causing pollution

Dr Idris F. Sulaiman, CEO of Computers Off Australia, has pointed out that the latest survey of household internet use from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that:

• the ACT leads the nation in broadband connections with 68 per cent of dwellings plugged online via fat pipes in June
• Australia's connectivity is behind leaders within the OECD (who are also leaders in the Asia Pacific) but scores better than the average of the larger 27-member EU nations
• the metropolitan divide in connectivity (urban - 57% vs. non-urban - 43%) is lower than the income digital "connectivity" divide (81% in 'rich' households, earning more than $120k. vs. 38% in 'poor' households earning less than $40k.)
• the national figure was 52% - a rise of 22% on previous year: there was a comparable growth of household computer access and, hence their carbon footprint may be also increasing around the same rate - around 20% emissions growth per year.

He suggests this is a significant growth of emissions that must be addressed.

Climate change department estimate out by 900%

I hope whoever is doing the greenhouse gas accounting at the Department of Climate Change is better with numbers than their web-master. A National Carbon Offset Standard Discussion Paper has been released. According to the web site, this is 5.48 MB of PDF. I thought this would be useful for my Green ICT students to look at. When I downloaded a copy I found it was 548 Kbytes, one tenth of the quoted figure. It is a little worrying when numbers associated with a standard for accounting are off by a factor of ten. If they get the savings for greenhouse gas that wrong, we could all end up underwater. ;-)

A more serious problem with the paper is that it is in the form of one hard to read, monolithic PDF file. Attachment C to the document is a draft National Carbon Offset Standard. This deserves detailed analysis, but that will be difficult with it tacked onto the end of the PDF document. The climate change department should release the draft as a separate, accessible HTML document. The W3C's HTML standards are a good example of how to format a standard in HTML. There is no need to provide the standard in PDF and most readers will be reading and using the standard on a computer screen, not printed on paper. Therefore formatting for on-line use should be the priority. I couldn't wait for the Department to do this and have created my own HTML markup: Draft National Carbon Offset Standard.

Some minor corrections for the current draft:

1. In "3. Terms and definitions" The entry for "businessas-usual" should be "business-as-usual".
   
2. Number elements: section 4. Elements of the Standard lists the six key elements as bullet points. These should be numbered, one to six.
3. Several sections of the report, such as "5.3.1 Scope" have only one paragraph which is numbered: "(a) The ...". As there is no "(b)" there seems no point in numbering the section.
4. Footnotes: The use of footnotes, such as for "The Greenhouse Friendly Guidelines", should be avoided.
   

More serious issues:

1. No government arbitrary rights: Section 6.1. Eligible offset units says: "The Government reserves the right to amend eligible offset units as required in
   light the development of new international standards, and other policy developments." This arbitrary right to amendments by government will weaken confidence in the system.
2. Definition of "permanent": The standard requires that emission reductions must be permanent. Specifically this requires that sequestered carbon will not be released into the atmosphere in the future. No time span is included. There would appear to be no way to ensure this, so ruling out sequestration.
3. No legislative measures: Complaince with specific laws is outside the scope of a voluntary standard. Thus "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will assess compliance with the Standard. Incorrect claims risk contravening the Trade Practices Act 1974" should be moved to a separate document.
   

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 12 Two Week 7s

In Part 11 I looked at courses were being offered around the world as part of preparing a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. That showed what I was doing was consistent with the limited other courses available. So I continued on preparing the material for each week of the course (I have a Christmas deadline to have it finished). But at week seven (out of 13) I discovered a problem: I had scheduled two week sevens.

The course is thirteen weeks long. It was suggested I leave the last week for revision, giving twelve weeks. These were then divided into four topics, each with three weekly topics. I started with an introduction in week one and then went on setting down the topics for each week. But I forgot to count week one, thus ending up with an extra topic.

So now I had to work out what to do. This may seem a careless mistake which should have been caught earlier on, which it is. One reason for the mistake taking so long to find is the online preparation of the material. On my small screen, with a big font (to make it readable) only one topic can be displayed at a time. Thus I never saw the two "week 7" titles on the screen at the same time. Had I printed the document out, this would have been easier to spot.

When I went back and reread the advice I had been originally given by David Lindley, Academic Principal of ACS Education, I realised that the problem was not that bad. He suggested 4 major topics each of three weeks, with each week is a new sub-topic, which is what I did. But I got a little confused and wrote the introduction as a separate week. So all I had to do was merge the introduction into week one.

At this point I thought I should do some more checks of the material. I found a number of spelling mistakes. There seems to be a conflict between the Firefox add-on spell checker and the Moodle web based HTML editor, resulting in the spell checker not working some of the time (the same happens with the Blogger editor). Just to make sure, I used the grammar and spell checker extension for OpenOffice.org. This found a few repeated words, blank spaces, uses of "can not" instead of "cannot" and the like.

One problem I found was that one of the semianr topics (week 6) seems to be un-editable. I suspect there was some invalid HTML code which is causing problems for the Moodle editor. Running the code through HTML Tidy, fixed the problem.

Australian Government Carbon Target Too Low

The Australian Government released its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper today (15 December 2008). Buried down in the detail is a CO2 reduction target of only 5 to 15 per cent below 2000 levels by the end 2020. This is much less than the 25% needed to address climate change and is not an acceptable target, in my view. A reduction of 15% could be made just through Green ICT initiatives alone, using the techniques I will be teaching, in an ACS course starting 18 January 2009. This is without the need to make major changes to industry or lifestyle.

Use of the Internet is integral to the trading scheme proposed by the government, but I could find no mention of how ICT could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

Policy position 7.22
The Scheme regulator will publish emissions obligations under the Scheme, the types of estimation methodologies used and any uncertainty estimates reported by liable entities on the internet as soon as is feasible after reports are submitted. ...

Green Paper position
As soon as feasible after reports are submitted, the Government would publish on the internet emissions obligations under the scheme, the types of assessment methodologies used and any uncertainty estimates reported by liable entities. ...

Administrative costs

More frequent auctions involve a higher administrative cost for the regulator, and potentially for bidders. However, the capacity to hold auctions on the internet means that costs are unlikely to be an important factor in determining auction frequency. ...

Internet auction platform

Auctions will be conducted using an internet platform. The internet platform will encourage more entrants and greater competition because it is low cost and readily accessible. ...

From:Volume 1 Full Report, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper , Australian Government, 15 December 2008 (emphasis added).

Many Australian companies have expressed interest in participating in the CDM, but are unfamiliar with the processes and rules. Designated operational entities are best placed to advise project participants on the likelihood of a project achieving registration and generating CERs. However, the Department of Climate Change will provide background information to potential investors and project developers on the CDM project cycle and requirements. It will also help participants access other useful information via the internet. ...

The Kyoto Protocol also requires the national registry to make certain information publicly available, and to provide a publicly accessible user interface through the internet that allows people to query and view the information. Publicly available information will include:

• the holder of each account
• the type of each account (holding, cancellation or retirement)
• the commitment period with which a cancellation or retirement account is associated
• the representatives of account holders
• the full name, mailing address, phone number, fax number and email address of each account holder representative. ...

The Department of Climate Change compiles Australia’s greenhouse gas inventory using the Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System (AGEIS). The AGEIS centralises emissions estimation, inventory compilation, reporting and data storage processes into a single system. It has been used to consolidate Australia’s emissions estimation methodologies and fully integrated quality control procedures into the compilation process. The AGEIS provides high transparency levels for the inventory—emissions data from the AGEIS database for the set of national inventory accounts are publicly accessible through a dynamic web interface. ...

From: Volume 2 Full Report, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper , Australian Government, 15 December 2008 (emphasis added).

The summary is provided as a well formatted HTML page. The detailed content of the report is in PDF and Ms-word. The Ms-Word version seems superfluous and a HTML version of the report would be far more useful (as was done with the Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report). There is some odd wording which says that "The PDF version is the only legal version of the print version.". This may make some sense to a lawyer, but not to anyone else. In contrast to this the actual content of the report is very readable.

• Summary
• Fact sheets
• Public information sessions
• Supporting documentation
  
• Press Club Address from the Prime Minister
• More publications
• Full report
  Volume 1
  • Title Page (30 KB)
    Title Page (Word 127 KB)
  • Foreword (78 KB)
    Foreword (Word 3.88 MB)
  • Table of Contents (43 KB)
    Table of Contents (Word 84 KB)
  • Acronyms (38 KB)
    Acronyms (Word 84 KB)
  • Executive Summary (337 KB)
    Executive Summary (Word 484 KB)
  • Policy Decisions Summary (124 KB)
    Policy Decisions Summary (Word 226 KB)
  Volume 1 Chapters
  • Chapter 1 The policy context (116 KB)
    Chapter 1 (Word 203 KB)
  • Chapter 2 The need for action (535 KB)
    Chapter 2 (Word 1.33 MB)
    
  • Chapter 3 Shaping a global solution (70 KB)
    Chapter 3 (Word 165 KB)
    
  • Chapter 4 National emissions trajectory and target (368 KB)
    Chapter 4 (Word 681 KB)
  • Chapter 5 A framework for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (141 KB)
    Chapter 5 (Word 241 KB)
  • Chapter 6 Coverage (1.29 MB)
    Chapter 6 (Word 2.43 MB)
  • Chapter 7 Reporting and compliance (268 KB)
    Chapter 7 (Word 445 KB)
  • Chapter 8 Carbon markets (502 KB)
    Chapter 8 (Word 839 KB)
  • Chapter 9 Auctioning of Australian carbon pollution permits (203 KB)
    Chapter 9 (Word 348 KB)
  • Chapter 10 Setting scheme emissions caps (371 KB)
    Chapter 10 (Word 676 KB)
  • Chapter 11 Linking the Scheme to international markets(202 KB)
    Chapter 11 (Word 278 KB)
  Volume 2
  • Volume 2 Title Page (295 KB)
    Title Page (Word 127 KB)
  • Volume 2 Table of Contents (33 KB)
    Table of Contents (Word 72 KB)
  Volume 2 Chapters
  • Chapter 12 Assistance to emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries (734 KB)
    Chapter 12 (Word 1.53 MB)
  • Chapter 13 Assistance to strongly affected industries (351 KB)
    Chapter 13 (Word 657 KB)
  • Chapter 14 Tax and accounting issues (157 KB)
    Chapter 14 (Word 224 KB)
  • Chapter 15 Transitional issues (99 KB)
    Chapter 15 (Word 164 KB)
  • Chapter 16 Governance arrangements and implementation (112 KB)
    Chapter 16 (Word 225 KB)
  • Chapter 17 Household assistance measures (878 KB)
    Chapter 17 (Word 1.78 MB)
  • Chapter 18 Climate Change Action Fund (142 KB)
    Chapter 18 (Word 678 KB)
  • Chapter 19 Complementary measures (58 KB)
    Chapter 19 (Word 118 KB)
  • Appendix A List of public submissions (212 KB)
    Appendix A (Word 986 KB)
  • Appendix B Comparison of emissions trading scheme design approaches (150 KB)
    Appendix B (Word 220 KB)
  • Appendix C Implementing the Kyoto Protocol (195 KB)
    Appendix C (Word 547 KB)
    
  • Appendix D Possible strongly affected industries (39 KB)
    Appendix D (Word 101 KB)
    
  • Appendix E Budget summary (76 KB)
    Appendix E (Word 172 KB)
  • Glossary(114 KB)
    Glossary (Word 276 KB)
    
  Full report
  • Volume 1 Full Report ( zipped PDF 3.81 MB)
    
  • Volume 2 Full Report ( zipped PDF 2.3 MB)
  
  
  

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 11 Other Courses

In Part 10 I reported on some Australian green ICT events I had attended as part of preparing a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. That showed what I was proposing for the course was consistent with the approach others in Australia were taking with Green ICT. However, I tought I should look more widely and see what other courses were being offered around the world.

Margaret Ross, Southampton Solent University, UK and Bob Crooks, DEFRA gave an "Overview of Green ICT" to the BCS Academics Forum, 14 November 2008. This included many of the same information on the extent of carbon emissions from ICT as other presentations and ways to deal with it, but it also has a few slides on courses:

We need

• Students and staff to
  • understand the issues, be aware and skilled in tackling them, promote green behaviours
  • use their own and Estab’s ICT in greener ways
• Educational establishments to see Green as
enhancing reputation and attraction for students
• reducing costs (less Carbon = Less energy => less cost)
• Courses to provide
Accreditation of Green skills and knowledge
• Green dimensions

...
Assignments and Projects

Assessment:

* Case history or evaluation of an organisation
* Survey, eg of local SMEs
* Audits
* Learning Activities, eg multi-choice questions


Identifying for an organisation

* Benefits and risks
* “Road map” with priorities justified,
* Budget, time scale
* Business case

And the Curriculum...

* BCS initiatives
o ISEB module
o SME awareness
o Branch forum/mash ups

...

Leeds Metropolitan University is offering a MSc Green Computing. The part-time course modules are delivered as workshops, with self study and distance learning support. Assessment is typically by reports related to the student's work and so appears similar in concept to the ACS course:

Core Modules
ICT and the Environment: Assesses and measures the current environmental impact of ICT within a corporate context.

Green Computing Technologies: Investigates existing and emerging green computing technologies and systems.

Sustainable Computing: Considers the whole life cycle from procurement to disposal with a sustainable objective.

Responsibly Green: Analyses the legal and ethical issues from a Corporate 'Green' perspective.

Green ICT strategies: Develop, formulate and evaluate Green ICT strategies for practical implementation.

Research Methods: Research, methods, skills and practice for masters level dissertations.

Brian Henderson-Sellers, UTS, has set a Green ICT Project, OO Modelling Project Report, UTS, 2008:

Case Study for Project Work & Deliverables

STATEMENT TO BE MODIFIED BY STUDENT GROUPS…

1. Green ICT (GICT)

... Note: Following are the requirements for a system called GREEN ICT (GICT). GICT is a system developed to provide systems support for businesses implementing Environmentally Responsible Business Strategies (ERBS). This is an example of how in practical real-life projects, information is initially provided as a set of descriptive pages: usually half-baked, hardly complete and at times confusing. The requirements below are more organized than that, but still the students are encouraged to delve deeper into these requirements to identify what the user wants out of the system. The students will be able to appreciate how they can further correctly, completely and consistently model and document these requirements and their designs using the UML. These requirements also describe the business situation that is so important in understanding the context in which the project exists. Understanding the context of the project is a crucial ingredient of the quality process. ...

2. Background information on the Project

GICT is a software system to be designed to support businesses implementing Environmentally Responsible Business Strategies (ERBS). Therefore, GICT is not software that is specific to a particular industry. In fact, GICT must be able to be used by various types of industry categories, including both product and service industries. ...

3. Players

There are number of players (also called stakeholders) in the GICT system. ...

4. Organizational Portal (OP)

The GICT is made up of two major parts – the Organizational Portal (OP) and the regulatory standards portal (described next). ...

5. Regulatory Standards Portal (RSP)

Regulatory Standards Portal (RSP) is a large portal, maintained by the government of the country (take, for example, Australia) ...

Green ICT Workshop, UNI Strategic Pte Ltd, December 4–5, 2008, Singapore:

Participants will Learn About

• What is “green”, what is “sustainable”, and what is “greenwash”
• How to assess their organization’s current ICT eco-footprint and create objective standards for measurement and performance.
• How to create a systematic and strategic plan for reducing the cost and eco-footprint of ICT assets and operations.
• How to estimate, document, and realize cost savings of greening IT.
• How to estimate, document, and realize the environmental benefits of greening IT.
• How to present and justify green ICT initiatives to technical, financial, environmental, and Social Responsibility stakeholders.

Kent Connects ran a one-day "Green ICT Workshop", Jul 14, 2008:

... Socitm Consulting experts will help you and your colleagues move this agenda forward:

• Understand the carbon footprint of your current ICT and customer service operations
• Learn about successful initiatives in the UK and elsewhere to reduce the environmental impact of delivering services to citizens
• Discover how green awareness and more flexible working methods can save your authority money
• Lay the foundations of an effective and realistic Green ICT action plan
• Find out how to monitor progress using Green ICT key performance indicators

Virtual Machine Infrastructure for NZ Hospitals

The New Zeeland West Coast District Health Board has issued a request for proposal for a Virtual Machine Infrastructure to replace its current 41 are physical servers. This is an interesting example of an attempt to rationalise a complex computer system. The board will need to decide if its two server rooms (primary and backup) are sufficient and how if more than just two physical servers are needed. The board would need to balance the saving in hardware and energy (and lower greenhouse gas emissions) this would provide against the security are reliability issues.

GETS Reference: 24453
Title: New Zealand based opportunityVirtual Machine Infrastructure
Request for Proposal RFP08/01

General Information:

WCDHB is the District Health Board that serves the health needs of the West Coast of the South Island. It currently has three hospital sites in Greymouth, Westport and Reefton.

It also has a health clinic in Hokitika and many smaller satellite based clinics up and down the Coast. WCDHB services an area from Karamea in the north to Haast in the south.

WCDHB has a wide area network spanning Karamea to Fox Glacier, including all major town centres on the West Coast.

WCDHB has 55 physical servers, of which 41 are physical servers and 14 virtual servers using VMware Infrastructure edition on a single physical server, using local disk as storage.

The servers are split between two server rooms, a primary and a backup (most being in the primary room), with a 4 Gig fibre backbone running between them.

The purpose of this Request for Proposal (“RFP”) is to invite external companies to submit their proposals to WCDHB with information on their skills, services and experience in providing Virtual Machine Infrastructure services and products.

The information is requested so that WCDHB can:

• Identify organisations interested in and capable of delivering these products/services; and
• Identify different methods of providing such products/services and a preferred solution/product.

Following the evaluation of the RFP responses, WCDHB may:

• Enter into negotiations with preferred supplier(s); and/or
• Conclude the process without awarding any contracts.

Note:
Site visits or workshops if needed: Available during 8th to 12th of December.

To access the RFP documentation please download from ...

Additional Documentation to Download... WCDHB VM RFP08 01.doc RFP documentation WORD 299.5kb
RFP08 01 Questions and Answers 09 Dec 08.doc Q & A's # 1 - Dated 9 December 08 WORD 190kb

Relates to the following TenderWatch Categories
841 Project management relating to IT service and delivery
842 Software implementation services
453 Computer software
849 Other computer services

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 10 The Content

In Part 9 I looked at some books for a new e-learning course on "Green IT Strategies", to be offered as part of the ACS Computer Professional Education Program. I didn't find any books worth using as a text and so decided to proceed using online readings only. As a way to get some relevant material and to check that I was on the right track with the course I organised a symposium in Canberra on Green ICT and talked at a Sustainable ICT Symposium at University of Melbourne. Also I talked to the people preparing Green ICT courses for TAFE.

I found that I was proposing to include in the course was consistent with what others said at the various events I attended. Also the management level course I was preparing should fit in well with the hands-on TAFE courses. Some of the materials from the symposia would be directly usable by the students in the course. One frustration was that many of the documents which had good content were very difficult to access as they were in the form of very large PDF documents. Also some videos could not be used as they did not have any accompanying text.

The ACS approved the draft of my course outline (one minor glitch had top be fixed when all my links to the SFIA web site turned out to be incorrect). A few days later the course was open for enrollments and students started applying. This then put pressure on me to complete the detailed, week by week, content for the course. To do this I continued to use the existing IT Service Management course as a template. I used the same titles and sequence for course content items, with each week having:

1. Readme 1st
2. Work Notes
3. Seminar
   
4. Discussion Questions
   
5. Friday Message

I used similar wording for these documents as the IT Service Management course, but changed the format of the documents from PDF to HTML. This makes the process of creating the content much easier. Instead of having to create the document with an external word processor, then convert into PDF and then transfer the file to the Moodle system, I am able to use the internal Moodle web editor to create and save the document in one operation. This should also make it easier for the students to read the documents online directly in the web browser, without needing to use a PDF viewer. The documents will not look as pretty when printed, but will still be very readable.

The documents used resemble those for a face-to-face course. Each document is the equivalent of between one half and two pages of text, with simple formatting of one column of text with headings, bold and italics (no colour or images used). The readme 1st gives the students an overall sense of where they should be up to that week.The seminar takes the place of lecture notes. The discussion questions are the equivalent of tutorial questions to be answered in the online discussion forum. The assignments and instructions about readings are much the same as they would be for a face to face course.

While the formatting is relatively simple and the documents short, considerable effort is still involved. It has taken me about two to three hours to prepare the documents for one week of the course. This is for a subject I am familiar with and without allowing for testing of the content, for example by trying the exercises or including preparing the marking schemes required. I expect that about five to seven hours will be required overall to prepare each week of material. This might be less if prepared texts and exercises were available, or more if I have to prepare content from scratch, rather than adapt material I have already written.

A major problem I have is the lack of a text book means I have to try and provide a coherent narrative from disparate sources. This is made more difficult as there is no accepted body of knowledge for the Green ICT field. Essentially I am having to make that up as I go along. Hopefully some of the students of this course will go on to define the field more clearly.

Green ICT at Petersham TAFE

After the Australian Computer Society hosted a presentation from TAFE NSW on their new ICT sustainability courses. The course developer, Stanley Tonkins, invited me along to the Petersham Campus of NSW TAFE to meet the class of 2008 and see their work.

Sydney Institute Petersham College has three campuses, with the Green ICT at the Crystal Street Campus, 27 Crystal Street, Petersham. This is a few minutes walk from Norton Street, Sydney's little Italy. While I have been along Crystal Street many times, I had never noticed the TAFE buildings. There is a modern brick building from the 1980s, but the IT department is in an older "Mechanics Institute" arts and crafts style building. This has very high ceiling and a wooden staircase, somewhat like an old boarding school. The modern computer equipment and interactive white boards look a little out of place, as does the solar panel on the roof which powers some of the computers.

The students do hands on projects, upgrading the hardware and software in desktop PCs and servers, wiring up networks. They also undertake study for "certified engineer" examinations. I was shown some exciting projects, including a very old and slightly rusty looking desktop PC which had been upgraded with a low power PC motherboard, a low power laptop type disk and a socket for a high capacity solid state flash drive.

There was also a rack mount server rescued from the tip, which had its memory upgraded and a free copy of a virtual operating system manager installed. This allowed Linux and Microsoft Windows to be run simultaneously. The student doing the work gave me an impromptu presentation, including a short video they had made for their report.

In the centre of the room, surrounded by computers, was what appeared to be an exercise bicycle. This is a prototype pedal powered generator for use in African hospitals. The unit was made from bicycle components and a car alternator. It is designed to run computers and medical equipment in a hospital during a power failure. I suggested to Stanley he might sell some of these to the local fitness centres: the customers could pedal to power the TV screens they watch.

What was most impressive about all this work was its practical hands-on nature and that the students were required to be able to explain what they were doing. Many university level students are able to work with complex ICT theories, but struggle to put them into practice, or to explain what it is they are doing. With Green ICT, as with many technological challenges, the problem is not so much getting the technology to work, but convincing peers and clients to use it.

After a talk to the students we adjourned to a cafe in Norton Street for end of semester coffee, cake and ice cream.

Next year new modules developed by TAFE NSW will be available:

1. Install and Test Power Saving Hardware
2. Install and Test Power Management Software
3. Install and Test Renewable Energy System for ICT Networks
4. Implement Server Virtualisation for a sustainable ICT System
5. Install and Test Web 2.0 OS and Applications on a Low Powered Workstation Fed by Power Over Ethernet
   

Some links from the TAFE:

1. Sustainability Project Presentation 2nd July 2008
2. Certificate IV in IT Semester 2 2007: VirtualServerImplementation
3. and Case Study - Low energy deshtop system Patjarr School
4. Certificate IV in IT Semester 1 2008: low energy desktop design considerations and Operating system on USB flash drive
5. Ubuntu server with renewable energy system supply - design.ppt
6. Diploma in IT Semester 1 2008: Solar Panel and Wind Generator
7. Solar Panel Installation and System Testing Presentation: Low Energy Consumption PC Cary

Green Information Technology Attitude Survey

RMIT University is conducting a Green Information Technology Attitude Survey. The Systems Models and Strategies Research Cluster from the School of Business Information Technology is researching the extent to which information technology (IT) professionals are aware and interested about Green Information Technology. Professionals are invited to take part and can receive a free summary of the results.

Enrolments open for first globally accredited Green ICT course

Enrolments are now open for the new elective subject "Green ICT" within the Australian Computer Society ’s Computer Professional Education Program (CPeP). This subject looks at how computer and telecommunications professionals can deal with sustainability, energy saving and greenhouse gas emissions in planning hardware and software projects.

Enrolments close 11 January 2009 for Study Period 1, which commences 18 January and runs to 19 April 2009. The ACS CPeP program is the first in the world to be globally accredited by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), a non-governmental, non-profit umbrella organisation created under the auspices of UNESCO for national societies working in the field of information processing.

Enrolments can be in the Green ICT subject alone, or as part of the full CPe Program. Credit towards Graduate Diploma and Master courses are offered by articulation with: Chifley Business School, Australian Catholic University, Central Queensland University, Curtin University of Technology and Swinburne University of Technology.

Profiting in a Carbon Future, Sydney, 3 December 2008

Bond University will be running a one day workshop in Profiting in a Carbon Future in Sydney 3 December 2008.

Profiting in a Carbon Future
Tips, Traps and Tactics
3rd December 2008, Sydney

An interactive workshop which addresses the commercial
and risk management challenges associated with a carbon
economy.

On a global scale, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions are
relatively small. However, on a per capita basis, we rank
as one of the three highest greenhouse polluters on the
planet. The Australian Government hopes to turn this around
through an ambitious Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
that will challenge relevant businesses in all sectors to
reduce emissions by potentially 25% by 2020 and by 90%
by 2050.

How will you identify and capture the rewards that will
emerge from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme for
tr