[LINK] AGIMO details Federal Government data centre needs

[Tom Worthington]

Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> On 2/07/2010 9:47 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:
> 
>> ... electricity and cooling ... I suggest mandatory requirements 
>> are needed for these in government tenders for data centres.
> 
> Tom, I suggest you actually read the draft RFT ...

 From my reading of the draft RFT, there are no mandatory requirements
for energy use monitoring or cooling efficiency. The tenderer is only
required to describe how they would report and what cooling technology 
they have.

So the tendered could say, for example: "we pro-rata the electricity use 
based on how many equipment racks the customer is leasing ... we have a 
horribly inefficient cooling system powered by burning nasty brown coal" 
and still meet the tender requirements.

> In addition, AGIMO has the problem of writing requirements that last 
> for 10-15 years so they would be unwise to be too prescriptive in 
> certain areas.

It would seem to me that the Government should start with a mandatory
minimum level of monitoring and performance and then aim to improve on
it later. The current draft RFT essentially says: "tell us if you are
doing anything about energy efficiency or greenhouse gas emissions, but
we don't really care, so neither should you, as we are going to buy the
cheapest service, regardless of how damaging it is to the environment".


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au