The FMYI team traveled to sunny Washington, DC for GreenGov recently to complete the fourth installment of sustainability conference season (GoGreen, GreenBiz Innovation Forum, Net Impact, and GreenGov). The White House Council on Environmental Quality‘s GreenGov focuses on sustainability within a wide range U.S. federal government agencies such as the Navy, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense, Department of Veteran Affairs, Homeland Security, the National Laboratory, Department of Agriculture, Office of Management & Budget, and many more.
FMYI played a role in several ways. The planning team managed the conference using our FMYI platform. FMYI President Justin Yuen moderated a panel on “Green IT and Transformational Possibilities.“ We were also a featured sponsor and an exhibitor. Since we traveled from Portland, we wanted to minimize the footprint of our booth. We were able to fit everything into one normal sized grocery bag. Thanks to the wonderful folks at Capital Bikeshare, we also had a gleaming red bicycle in front of our table to draw interest and to publicize the memberships we raffled off to the lucky winners while raising awareness of our new Change Agents Unite online community.
Through our many conversations during the week from people stopping by our table, interactions during networking time, attending sessions, and having meetings with agencies in DC, here are the three keys to governmental sustainability integration that I saw:
1. Clear mission
President Obama’s 2009 Executive Order on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance sets clear goals for agencies. The GreenGov conference and many new initiatives have sprung up as a result. Instead of a vague mission statement paying lip service to this topic, the Executive Order has very tangible goals that agencies can build plans around to achieve.
2. Measure your progress
During the panel I moderated featuring Wanda Gibson (Chief Technology Officer, Fairfax, Virginia County Government), John Tuccillo (Vice President, Global Industry and Government Alliances, Schneider Electric), and Tamim Chowdhury (Realty Specialist, U.S. General Services Administration), everyone focused in on measuring the impact of their efforts. Wanda talked about a “Just Do It” attitude with identifying opportunities to be more efficient and save money. Her efforts won an InfoWorld Green 15 Award for Virtualization and PC power management. John talked about how within a short period of time they were able to save $15,000 annually by cutting energy usage 20% for a 2500 square foot EPA data center. He estimates that there’s $1.1 billion in energy savings opportunities in the U.S. with similarly-sized data centers. And Tamim covered the GSA’s efforts to reduce the footprint of federal office space through space planning and teleworking to achieve $3 billion in cost savings required by President Obama.
3. Employee engagement
To scale their efforts, agencies are relying on collaboration across their employee base. The biggest example of this is the Postal Service’s Green Team efforts which saved $27 million last year. Each team has access to a suggested list of projects they can take on, and USPS tracks the trailing indicators that capture the operational savings across the country. The GSA has a sustainability fellowship program to engage and train staff across the agency to create innovative projects. And I gave a brown bag session at the Peace Corps as they ramp up their engagement efforts with staff around the world to create sustainable results in line with the Executive Order.
We came away impressed by the discipline, resourcefulness, and operational mindset of the different agencies as they identified opportunities and rolled out initiatives to save money, minimize their environmental impact, and engage employees. Many leveraged partnerships with NGOs and the private sector and were energetic innovators. This gives me great hope for creating triple bottom line value on a greater scale, especially considering the footprint and influence of the federal government.
Onward and upward,
-Justin

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