In an effort to make the University more environmentally sustainable, GW’s Information Systems and Services department announced last month they will implement new initiatives to lower energy use and reduce the amount of paper the University uses.
Making GW a more sustainable environment has been one of University President Steven Knapp’s bigger goals since he began his tenure, and ISS’s new sustainability efforts are the latest in a slew of initiatives taken on by the University over the past few years.
In order reduce the University’s carbon footprint, David Steinour, interim chief information officer for ISS, said his department will replace less energy-efficient equipment and reconfigure other equipment with new features that allow for energy savings, like power-downs after a computer has not been in use.
Steinour added that ISS will also replace the University’s older servers with virtual servers, as well as newer, more energy-efficient servers. A server, Steinour said, hosts data from applications like the GW Web site, the GWorld card system and the Banner information system, among other things. These newer servers have greater computing power, and can hold more data than the older machines, which Steinour said used a lot of energy to run and required heavy air conditioning keep cool.
“The biggest [initiative] that we are seeing the best return for is the virtualization of our servers,” Steinour said. “What you have is a physical server, and in the past you could only put one application on that server. Now you can put up to 15 to 20 applications on one physical server.”
By December of this year, Steinour said he hopes to have 60 to 70 percent of the University’s data hosted on these new servers.
Another goal ISS has set is to lower the amount of paper used around GW.
“We’re pushing toward a paperless society,” Steinour said. “I don’t know if that’s realistic or not, but in the end we are using a system called Documentum and we are doing document imaging in the administrative offices.” That will reduce the number of printouts that occur, save a lot of paper from actually having files on hand, and reduce the footprint of physical space needed to store the physical documents, he added.
Last month, Computerworld Magazine rated ISS one of the top 100 places to work in information technology, which Steinour said has to do with ISS’s innovative sustainability initiatives, among other things.
Meghan Chapple-Brown, director of GW’s Office of Sustainability, said she will work with ISS in the coming year to create a concrete plan by May 2010 to reduce the University’s carbon emissions.
“ISS has really taken initiative on this, and the Office of Sustainability has not steered their efforts, they’ve really taken the initiative themselves,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we haven’t been working together, but they really should be commended for the initiative they have taken on this.”
While these three initiatives are a good start to making ISS more sustainable, Steinour said there is more work to be done.
“I think we have, in my opinion, only scratched the surface on what we can do,” Steinour said. “I think there’s a lot more going forward, and I challenge other universities to take a look at their carbon footprints and how they do business in technology and how they can move in that direction as well.”
