P2zero and the GDSA

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The GDSA brings a team of specialists together, from existing or prospective digital and data suppliers to the UK Government. The group collaborate to come up with proposals for new tooling, reporting methodologies, training, frameworks, and guidance on key societal issues. The main purpose of GDSA is promoting and progressing knowledge and capabilities to deliver sustainable digital data and technology across UK Government and their suppliers.

GDSA collects, shares, and demonstrates best practice aligned to Defra and the UK Government’s Greening Government Commitments. GDSA feeds recommendations into updates and the creation of policy and strategy. 

GDSA members have a chance to suggest best practice and overcome inhibitors to their own company’s success in digital sustainability, and collaborate, learn and share insights with other government suppliers.

Reporting into Defra, there are now five GDSA working groups with responsibilities covering:

• Scope 3
• Planetary Impact
• Circular Economy
• AI
• Green Service Design Principles.

Any GDSA member organisation wishing to nominate someone to join a working party must commit them a minimum amount of time on an unpaid basis to attend meetings, participate in workshops and work on projects allocated by the working group chair.

P2zero has two members of staff committed to GDSA working groups, contributing  an expected 35 days of total time each year to the Alliance as part of our "pro bono" sustainability commitments.

In January 2025 Ewen Anderson of P2zero was asked to take on the role of Chair for the Scope 3 (Government Digital Supply Chain) Working Group.

 The Scope 3 working group’s objective is to identify and promote opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of the government's digital supply chain.  This will include reviewing cross-government proposals for reporting frameworks and standards.  In 2025 the Group will focus on sharing examples of successful scope 3 measurement and reduction across hardware, cloud, software and services. 

Membership of the Group includes representatives from specialist sustainability consultancies, ISVs, hyper-cloud providers, SIs and includes representation from two of the world's largest technology companies.

The current Greening Government ICT strategy was issued by Defra in 2020 and identified five key areas for attention and outcomes the strategy should deliver:

1. Reduced carbon & costs
2. Increased resilience
3. Increased responsibility (doing the right thing)
4. Increased transparency and collaboration
5. Increased accountability

These aims are in support of UN SDGs (sustainable development goals)  7 (Sustainable Energy for All), 9 (Resilient Infrastructure), 12 (Sustainable Consumption & Production), 12 (Climate Adaptation) and 17 (Partnerships).

The existing strategy can be found here.

Work is now underway by Defra to finalise the strategy for 2025 - 2030 with input from the GDSA working groups and members.

The UK government's 2050 net zero target was made legally binding by the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, making the UK the first major economy to pass a net zero emissions law.

The UK government's Build Back Greener strategy in 2021 projected that "Removing dirty fossil fuels from the global economy will lead to the creation of vast new global industries from offshore wind to electric vehicles and carbon capture and storage. By moving first and making the United Kingdom the birthplace of the Green Industrial Revolution we are building a defining competitive edge."

Under the new government the latest initiatives from the  Department for Energy Security& Net Zero have included a renewed focus on sustainable energy development and restrictions on new coal mines and oil and gas fields. 

If you are interested in finding out more about the GDSA and the Greening Government ICT strategy there are some excellent resources and blog posts available.

Some examples are:

Greening Government ICT blog: https://sustainableict.blog.gov.uk/tag/greening-government/

GDSA blog:

https://sustainableict.blog.gov.uk/category/sustainable-ict/gdsa/

UK Net Zero commitment:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/net-zero-strategy/1-why-net-zero