The purpose of the questions on this page is to evaluate the sustainability of the ICT infrastructure of an enterprise. If a question cannot be answered with “yes” there could be potential for improvement.

1. Strategy and Organization
1.1 Is the responsibility for sustainability and/or environmental issues and/or Green IT in your enterprise assigned?
1.2 Is a Green IT strategy developed and integrated in the existing environment management systems?
1.3 Are the ICT services units and ICT infrastructure units consolidated?
1.4 Are the cost of all the ICT Services allocated and billed by user departments for the whole company?
1.5 Are efficiency objectives, planned actions and their significance as well as progress communicated clearly internally and externally (communication plan)?
1.6 Is there an education concept in addition to the communication plan for the employees?
2. Energy management
2.1 Is the energy consumption in the ICT-area known, is it measured?
2.2 Is the energy consumption in addition to the hardware also measured in the ICT services and software area?
3. PC workplace
3.1 Are PCs if not used in the sleep mode and will they be switched-off completely at the end of the workday (avoid apparent off-mode)?
3.2 Are energy savings programs on the workplace PC used (energy management tools), which allow to adapt the electricity consumption to the needed performance?
3.3 Are in the place of fully equipped workstations thin clients used?
4. Display
4.1 Is the energy savings mode in the displays activated?
4.2 Are the displays when not in use for longer periods switched off?
4.3 Is after delivery of the displays the brightness adapted, respectively optimized?
4.4 Are the screen savers deactivated?
5. Printer
5.1 Are printers in standby mode during the workday and switched off at night?
5.2 Are the default values in the printer drivers set to black and white?
5.3 Is to a large extent recycling paper used?
5.4 Is double page printing routinely used?
5.5 Are toner cartridges collected in order to refill and reuse them?
5.6 Are primarily multifunction printers used?
5.7 Is printer centralization enforced?
5.8 Are printers preferred which do not have combined toner and development units?
6. Server
6.1 Is server operation systematically optimized (for example through application of cloud computing)?
6.2 Are the newest available energy optimized technologies used? Are old servers being replaced early on by the most modern ones?
6.3 Is workplace virtualization with thin clients implemented?
6.4 Is application consolidation on the servers taking place?
6.5 Is server virtualization taking place (several virtual servers on one physical server)?
6.6 Are the energy savings functions on the server used?
6.7 Are blade servers used?
6.8 Do you pay attention to adequate size of servers?
6.9 Is the cooling of the servers in the dedicated server room optimized and the temperature adjusted to the highest by the supplier recommended room temperature?
6.10 Is the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) optimized as much as possible for energy efficiency?
7. Network
7.1 Are WiFi Access Points switched off when not used for a longer period (for example with a timer)?
7.2 Are the WiFi routers powered by the Eithernet?
7.3 Is the Wake-on-LAN function of the workplace PCs deactivated?
7.4 Are in the Local Area Network for PCs and peripheral units intelligent switches used?
8. Social and ecological aspects
8.1 Are the introduced IT-products checked for environmentally friendly production and gray energy?
8.2 Are the social responsibility of the producers and the working conditions of their suppliers considered when buying a product?
8.3 Are replaced and redundant products returned to the sellers or otherwise properly disposed?
8.4 If products are acquired is the energy need checked and are primarily products with energy labels bought?
9. Various
9.1 Are network adaptors when not in use separated from the socket?
9.2 Is the concept of desk sharing implemented, meaning the use of PCs which are only partly used by several employees?