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Government Cloud, Green Government, Policy

Japan's green government cloud

By Kelly Ng | 21 April 2010

Speaking at FutureGov’s last Government Cloud Forum in Singapore, Hideaki Sugiura, Director, IT Project Office, Commerce and Information Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), shared several cloud computing projects which the Japanese government has initiated.

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• SPOTLIGHT

The Kasumigaseki Cloud integrated the data centres of different public sector ministries, reducing excess resources and maintenance of individual systems. METI developed a web site for its national ‘Eco-Points Programme’ in three short weeks by using cloud computing technology.

The web site supported close to five million online applications from citizens and corporations within live months of its launch. METI launched a web site called the ‘Idea Box’ for citizens to post ideas, comment, or cast votes on e-government programmes in real-time. Using cloud technology, the web site supported 698,457 page views, 1063 users, 456 posts, 1250 comments and 7041 votes in one month.

While there are similar government cloud computing projects underway around the region, what sets Japan apart is its motivation. According to Sugiura, cloud computing and green IT are tightly bound together. Cloud computing serves the government’s ecological strategies of ‘green of IT’ and ‘green by IT’. The utility model and the consolidation of resources will lead to a lower carbon society. Energy consumption of IT devices is forecast to increase five-fold by 2025 and twelvefold by 2050, using 2006 figures as a baseline. This explains why Japan has such a strong green agenda. And technology is in the running to be the key enabler.

Green IT promises to reduce 130 million tonnes of CO2 by 2025, which is close to a 10 per cent cut if compared with 2007 emissions figure of 1374 million tonnes. 20 million tonnes savings will come from ‘Green of IT’ – making IT systems more energy efficient – while majority of the reduction, 110 million tonnes, will be a result of ‘Green by IT’ which refers to IT conserving energy in other areas such as homes, businesses, transportation, industries, etc. The Japanese government has been promoting its green government cloud computing project in three key areas. “First, we promote high functionality and performance data centres which have smaller footprints. Second, we want to encourage the innovative use of citizen information by integrating our data use platform. Finally, to ease adoption of cloud services, we are researching data portability and revising the legal system,” he added.

Elaborating on the Japanese government’s data centres, Sugiura highlighted the current problem of energy inefficiency that most facilities are facing today. 33 per cent of total energy used goes on air conditioning, which is equivalent to the amount used to power the IT equipment. He cited a data centre in Japan which successfully saved 40 per cent of electric power used through measures such as the generation of solar energy and virtualisation. It looks like Japan is on the right track to becoming a smart eco-nation.

The only challenges the government needs to overcome now are strengthening collaboration among stakeholders (namely industry, citizens, and academia), developing policies to keep up with the market changes, and accelerating technological advancement, concluded Sugiura.