Report Shows Slow Movement in ICT Sustainability

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Fujitsu, a provider of information and communication technology business solutions, recently released the second ICT Sustainability: The Global Benchmark Report, an analysis of trending maturity of ICT sustainability in organizations across the globe.

Research from the report summarizes 1,000 responses to 80 questions about ICT sustainability policies, behavior and technologies.

The data was collected through an online survey of chief information officers and (ICT) managers in organizations that use information technology heavily across industry sectors in Australia, Canada, China, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

“This is the second Benchmark Report and from this year’s findings there is a continuing relative lack of maturity in ICT Sustainability,” a statement from Fujitsu said. “It is also clear there is a direct relationship between the visibility of ICT power costs and an organization’s overall awareness of ICT Sustainability issues.”

The index across all countries and all industry sectors declined slightly between 2010 and the current results from 56.4 to 54.3 percent, showing that organizations may be losing focus on ICT energy efficiency and that ICT projects implemented have failed to institutionalize changes across the organization, the statement said.

“More than half the respondents had no understanding of how much power ICT consumes, with only one in seven ICT divisions including the cost of ICT’s power consumption in their departmental budgets,” the statement said. “For the very small proportion (14.2 per cent) where ICT has control and responsibility for ICT-specific power consumption, their performance was significantly higher.”

The report showed that larger organizations that have more sophisticated ICT functions and generally more advanced ICT Sustainability practices are more likely to be aware of the cost of its energy consumption.

Organizations with more than 5,000 employees have an average score of 61.7 compared with just 50.7 for those with 100 to 499 employees, according to the report.

"Not only is there a relative lack of maturity in ICT Sustainability policies, practices and technologies but the overall Index has declined slightly from 2010, indicating that some of the buzz has gone from Green ICT,” said Alison Rowe, Fujitsu’s Global Executive Director of Sustainability. "Many organizations have reached a plateau with ICT Sustainability. They may have tackled the easy initiatives, such as PC power management or telecommuting, but the problem is that even these have declined in performance.”

Rowe said the survey revealed that the single most important reason ICT departments don’t prioritize ICT sustainability or have a compelling reason to do so is the lack of visibility of ICT power consumption.
“Until this data can be quantified, change cannot be measured and successes cannot be recognized,” she said.

“While there are flickers of improvement, much more can be done at all levels across all sectors to improve the environmental performance of organizations throughout the country,” Noel Carawan-Hubin, Fujitsu America’s Sustainability Lead.

Report Findings, provided by Fujistu:

Best Performing Country
The best performing country of the seven surveyed is Canada, with an overall ICT Sustainability Index of 60.3. Canada, the UK 58.3 and the USA 56.0 perform above average, while Australia, New Zealand, India and China perform below the average.

Best Performing Sector
The ICT/Communications/Media sector is the lead industry at 58.4 and Manufacturing the lowest at 51.2, except in Canada. As with the findings of the 2010 survey, the relativities between industry sectors are generally consistent across different countries; the same industries tend to do better or worse in all countries.

Approach to Lifecycle Matures
The Lifecycle component performs the best at 60.6, as it had in the previous Benchmark Report, with most organizations being relatively mature when it comes to practices in this area, particularly in the disposal of consumables and IT equipment. Lifecycle is followed by the two operational components under the control of the ICT department, End User at 57.3 and Enterprise at 56.8, where the techniques and technologies of ICT Sustainability are best understood and most advanced.

USA
The USA’s score of 56.0 is third overall; however, this is a decline since 2010, when it was 58.6. The USA is ahead of the international average in Lifecycle, Enterprise and Metrics, and marginally behind in End User and Enablement.

The USA performs close to the international average in most industry sectors, and well ahead in Utilities/Construction/Mining. Wholesale/Retail/Logistics also does relatively well, a reflection of the larger size of organizations in these sectors in the USA and the consequent greater sophistication of their ICT operations.

The highest score of 66.1 is for Lifecycle in Utilities/Construction/Mining. The lowest rating is for Metrics in Health/Education/Welfare at 2.0 — a sector that rates below average in all areas because of its comparatively low level of ICT sophistication.