If government is going to reduce energy consumption from hungry information technology processes, agencies will have to move past just buying environmentally friendly computer hardware to developing green strategies and benchmarks, an official with a federal IT contractor said.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Energy-efficient "technology will become commoditized, but there will always be differences in requirements of agencies,” said Raymond Cline, vice president of the infrastructure service line at IT contractor EDS. “Am I going to tell [an agency] to virtualize all its financial applications? No. The [policies] won’t be the same.” Cline was a member of a panel discussion at the Interagency Resources Management Conference in Cambridge, Md.

Generally, conversations about green IT focus on data centers and how to reduce the amount of power consumed by rows of servers. A number of recently issued policies encourage agencies to purchase energy-efficient products. A Federal Acquisition Regulation requires the use of the electronic products environmental assessment tool when acquiring personal computer products, and a proposal from the Office of Federal Procurement Policy outlines the expectations of agencies to purchase green products and services.

Energy Star, the joint program of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department, offers strict efficiency guidelines that are now being followed in the development of many computers, monitors and imaging equipment. They use less energy to perform regular tasks, and when not in use, automatically enter a low-power mode.

But energy-efficient products do not drive a long-term green agenda, according to Cline. “You make a modification on an energy star [product], and suddenly it’s not compliant anymore,” he said. “These are not rogue servers. These are business-critical systems that continue to grow.”

Agencies and industry need benchmarks that go beyond the hardware to help guide system and software development practices that encourage energy conservation. Right now, Cline said, “there aren’t any.”