DataCenterKnowledge has a post on Congress requiring Department Homeland Security (DHS) be greener.

DHS Data Center Funding Tied to Efficiency

October 19th, 2009 : Rich Miller

Congress has told the Department of Homeland Security that it must improve the power efficiency of its data center in Mississippi before it can get additional funds for an ongoing data center consolidation, NextGov reports.

The facility at NASA’s Stennis Space Center is one of two sites where DHS hopes to consolidate its data centers by 2013. But the facility’s power consumption is taxing the capacity of the Stennis campus, leading the House to restrict nearly half of the site’s $83 million budget until it upgrades its power capacity and improves its power efficiency.

The NextGov site has additional information.

Congress requires Homeland Security's data center to go green

BY JILL R. AITORO 10/16/2009

In the funding bill for the Homeland Security Department that it passed on Thursday, the House restricted more than half of the nearly $83 million budget for a massive data center until DHS develops ways to ensure there is enough power to sustain operations.

The fiscal 2010 Homeland Security appropriations bill requires the department to spend $38.5 million to upgrade the power capabilities at the National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage, known as Data Center One and based at NASA's Stennis Space Center, near the Gulf Coast in Mississippi. Homeland Security cannot spend the remaining $45 million on building out the data center, which will provide information processing for the entire department, until DHS officials can make certain the data center has enough power and uses green technologies to reduce demand.

Is this the start of more gov’t data centers to be green?  How much energy efficiency is sufficient to meet the Congress’s approval?

InformationWeek Government reports on Obama’s executive order.

Obama Orders Federal IT To Get Greener

An Executive Order mandates that federal agencies implement green data center strategies, double-sided printing, and PC power management, as part of a broader sustainability push.

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
October 6, 2009 02:55 PM

An executive order signed by President Obama requires that federal agencies take further steps to ensure that their IT purchases are energy efficient or otherwise environmentally friendly.

The mandates are part of Executive Order 13514, which sets sustainability goals for the U.S. government. Within 90 days, agencies are required to set a target for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 and to recycle or otherwise divert 50% of their waste by 2015.

"In order to create a clean energy economy that will increase our nation's prosperity, promote energy security, protect the interests of taxpayers, and safeguard the health of our environment, the federal government must lead by example," Obama wrote in the order.

The order means that sustainability will increasingly be factored into government acquisition of IT products and services. It's "going to make all of us look at what we do with IT with a new eye," said Jeff Eagan, electronics stewardship coordinator for the Department of Energy, during a panel discussion at 1105 Media's Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Green IT Summit in Washington.

WSJ has an article featuring France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy announcing a well-being index.

For France, a Joie de Vivre Index

Sarkozy to Add New Indicators, Such as Well-Being, to Measure Economic Health

By DAVID GAUTHIER-VILLARS

PARIS -- Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president two years ago on a pledge to boost France's economic prosperity. Now he is suggesting a different way to measure that prosperity -- one that includes factors such as vacation time, health care and family relationships.

From now on, to gauge the economy's health, France will consider well-being in addition to the classic measure of gross domestic product, Mr. Sarkozy said Monday in a speech at the Sorbonne, part of the University of Paris.

View Full Image

Michel Euler/Reuters

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered a speech at the Sorbonne University in Paris on Monday.

The specifics suggested are:

Healthy and Wealthy

Nicolas Sarkozy is suggesting gauges of economic health encompass well-being in addition to GDP. Measures could include:

• Employment levels
• Health care
• Vacation
• Household assets and income
• Consumption
• Education

The strategy is driven by top economists.

In the speech presenting the findings of a committee headed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the president said new measures are needed in the wake of the financial crisis, which was triggered by an overreliance on free-market principles. "If the market was the solution to all problems and was never wrong, then why are we in such a situation?" asked Mr. Sarkozy. "We need to change criteria."

And, sustainability is referenced as a reason for the change.

In the longer term, the panel said, governments must pay more attention to sustainability to determine what level of well-being can be maintained for future generations.

The green theme is mentioned in SFGate’s reference to Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has authored an important new study proposing new, and ultimately more accurate, ways of measuring a country's wealth. Wikipedia Commons The very formulas for...

Economists just want you to be happy

Economists just want you to be happy

The Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has authored an important new study proposing new, and ultimately more accurate, ways of measuring a country's wealth.

Wikipedia Commons

The very formulas for measuring growth and prosperity turn out to be biased such that environmental protections will always look like short-term caps on growth, when, ultimately long-term growth and survival depend on preserving our natural resources.

 

Healthcare is a huge user of data centers and the potential to replace all the paper records with electronic versions would save huge amounts of energy and resources.

Found this post where Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Craig Mundie both on the President’s Council of Advisors and Technology are involved in the e-health record project.

Google, Microsoft executives criticize Obama's e-health records plan

By Bob Brewin 08/06/2009

Newscom Google CEO Eric Schmidt says patients should have access to their records in a national health network.

Top executives at Google and Microsoft sharply questioned the structure of the Obama administration's $20 billion health information technology plan at a meeting of a presidential technology council on Thursday.

Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive officer of Google, told top health technology officials at a meeting of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that the current national health IT system planned by the administration will result in hospitals and doctors using an outdated system of databases in what is becoming an increasingly Web-focused world. The approach will stifle innovation, he said, and ensures medical professionals continue to use existing outmoded medical databases, many of which are copyrighted and cannot be duplicated.

Google and Microsoft are both motivated by their own solutions.

Google and Microsoft have developed Web-based personal health record software products, called Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault.

Eric Schmidt tried to promote the idea of open and user control.

Schmidt told the council that, like the Google and Microsoft applications, the national health IT system should be based on Web records that patients can control.

In addition, current electronic health record systems are proprietary and don't interoperate, said Richard Levin, president of Yale University. "What is out there is not very good," he said. "The reality is dismal."

In his opening remarks at the meeting, Blumenthal said he wanted to encourage innovation in the development of the national health records system, but he sidestepped Schmidt's questions on allowing patients to access and control their own records. He said his office is working on plans that will allow certain kinds of communications with personal health records, but he did not elaborate.

Chopra then said patients will receive summaries of their records.

Schmidt tersely responded, "Giving me a summary ... is not the same thing as giving me the record."

Craig Mundie tried to look at the bigger picture, but was slapped down.

The administration also should focus more on how to manage medical data -- including metadata to locate key pieces of information quickly -- rather than on the specifics of the electronic health records, said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft.

Blumenthal said Mundie's approach would not work because funding in the stimulus law is pegged to the adoption and use of electronic health records, not to management of data by clinicians.

Sounds like a typical bureaucratic limited scope project, not something the Obama Administration would be proud of.

I wonder how long it will be before Google and Microsoft skip the meetings, and work with other international governments who understand the need for openness and user control.