The Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plan 2010-2015 covers a wide range of Green ICT practices and should be considered by other government entities looking to adopt Green ICT practices. We will periodically look at various elements of the Australia's plan - first up are the six components of its ICT equipment procurement plan.

"Australian Government agencies currently manage significant quantities of ICT equipment, estimated at 350 000 PCs and laptops, 14 000 servers, and 37 500 imaging devices, as well as the consumables used in this equipment such as toner cartridges and copy paper." The government's ICT equipment procurement standards include:
- compliance with ISO 14024 or ISO 14021 at the level of EPEAT Silver or equivalent...;
- compliance with the current ENERGY STAR version...;
- product take-back and appropriate resource recovery, reuse or recycling for (a) mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs and Blackberry devices; (b) toner cartridges; and (c) ICT equipment covered by the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme...;
- general use office copy paper to have a minimum post-consumer recycled content of 50 per cent by July 2011, with progression to 100 per cent post-consumer recycled content;
- participation by ICT suppliers in the National Packaging Covenant by July 2011 or compliance with the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Material) Measure (UPM NEPM); and
- adoption by suppliers of an environmental management system aligned to ISO 14001.

We encourage governments to set the bar higher with a focus on EPEAT Gold products, but appreciate the Australia's challenge here. EPEAT lists less than 200 Gold computer and display models for Australia, compared with almost 1000 for the United States.