Information technology resources are strategic assets of the City and County of San Francisco that will be managed at the direction of the Committee on Information Technology (COIT).

Chapter 2 of the San Francisco Environment Code established a mechanism for increasing City departments’ purchases of environmentally preferable products.  For high priority product areas, departments may be required to adhere to lists of environmentally preferable products, known as the “SF Approved” lists.  Computer equipment was designated a high priority product category in 2006, and the Dept. of the Environment has been working with the Dept. of Technology, Public Utilities Commission, and City IT managers to define appropriate environmental goals and criteria.  In addition, the Mayor’s Executive Order 08-01 established a requirement that new personal computers, monitors and laptops meet at least the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) Silver standard, and that the City research and adopt similar standards for other equipment, such as servers and printers.

COIT Adopted a Green Information Technology Procurement Policy setting forth general guidelines for the procurement of IT equipment in August 2007.

PURPOSE AND SCOPE

The purpose of this policy is to adopt environmental requirements for the procurement of

  1. personal computers—including central processing units, monitors and laptops;

  2. servers and

  3. desktop laser printers.

These requirements will inform the Dept. of Environment’s “San Francisco Approved List” for specified categories of equipment.

POLICY STATEMENT

Personal Computers

All personal computers, notebook computers and monitors purchased by City departments shall meet the EPEAT Gold standard.

Servers

All computer servers purchased by City departments shall meet one or more of the following requirements.

  1. Climate Savers Certified at the time of purchase (specific product listings are available at http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/search/), and/or

  2. Energy Star (for Computer Servers) Label, when it becomes available in early 2009.  See:  http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=new_specs.enterprise_servers

* Initially the Energy Star for Server specification will exclude blade servers and servers with more than four processor sockets.

Exemptions: The only exemptions are blade servers and servers with more than 4 sockets, which need not comply with the server purchasing requirements listed above.  Energy Star plans to extend its standards to blade servers late in 2009; users are encouraged to visit the Energy Star web site at: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=new_specs.enterprise_servers to keep up with these developments The new Energy Star blade server requirements are likely to be incorporated into the City’s purchasing requirements for 2010.

Note:  IT purchasers are encouraged to “right-size” their server specification in terms of memory and redundant power supplies, to review manufacturer data sheets of servers that meet the given need, and to choose models with high efficiency over a range of operating loads.

Exceptions: Exceptions to this standard can be granted by COIT upon request by a department when departmental functional requirement cannot be met by equipment meeting the aforementioned environmental or energy efficiency standard.