Environment Agency touts greenest IT contract ever

Just a day after the government unveiled plans to ensure its entire IT estate carbon neutral by 2013, the Environment Agency has revealed it is on track to sign "the most sustainable green government IT contract ever" later this year.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with BusinessGreen.com's sister title IT Week, Simon Pitt, head of corporate information services at the agency, said that it was working on a £750m 10-year IT outsourcing contract designed to impose stringent sustainability criteria on both the primary supplier and its sub contractors.

"The deal will have very clear objectives for sustainability and green IT," he said. "We will make sure the provider we appoint is absolutely committed to rolling this type of contract out both down through its supply chain and into its other outsourcing contracts."

Pitt said the Environment Agency was already working with the Cabinet Office, which is managing the government's green IT strategy with a view to using the final contract as a template for other government deals.

"If we can get the contract right and cascade it throughout the government sector it would be a real coup," he said, adding that private sector firms would also be invited to use the criteria in their supply contracts. "If we can get our outsourcing partner to put in standard green terms that it will then use in its private-sector contracts, then the benefit from that would be absolutely huge,” he explained.

Pitt also revealed that the Agency's IT department is working on a number of projects to help improve its flood warning systems, including an initiative to integrate data from 110 of the Met Office’s real-time rain gauges into new, more detailed river forecasting models.