Council Programs and Events

The General Services Administration’s Data Center and Cloud Optimization Initiative PMO is collaborating with government and industry partners to host a virtual Data Center Sustainability Summit on April 6-7, 2022.

The Biden Administration established government-wide sustainability goals in the 2021 Executive Order on Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability (EO 14057) and its accompanying Federal Sustainability Plan. These goals include achieving a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050. This summit will highlight and celebrate the energy, environment, and infrastructure benefits that result from a transition from government-owned data centers to commercially-owned facilities, cloud computing, or software-as-a-service. Panels and keynote speakers will illustrate how the adoption of such modern IT infrastructure solutions is critical to the country’s transition to clean, zero-emissions technologies, as well as explore these solutions’ additional economic and national security benefits.

The summit is co-sponsored by the Federal Chief Information Officers Council and the Information Technology Industry Council.

Date: Wednesday, April 6 and Thursday, April 7, 2022
Time: 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM EDT
RSVP: https://gsa.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/9816439918053/WN_KkzAepS7TXCqg7gEvcUXRA

A tentative summary of events is below and is subject to change:

• IT Infrastructure and America's Path to Net-Zero Emissions Buildings by 2050: This panel will discuss the Administration’s climate and sustainability priorities in the context of the Federal Government’s ever-increasing demand for data centers and computing power.
  
  
• Revitalizing Underserved Communities with Disruptive Data Center Technologies: Experts from industry and academia will share a novel concept for revitalizing economically-depressed communities by building micro-grid and off-grid data centers around the country.
  
  
• Mission and Environmental Benefits of Cloud Service Providers and Software as a Service: Federal agencies will share the mission and environmental benefits they’ve obtained from moving to cloud services. Additionally, cloud service providers will discuss their corporate sustainability initiatives and how the use of scalable, on-demand cloud solutions can enable federal agencies to reduce their carbon footprints.
  
  
• Data Center Sustainability Strategies and Initiatives: Federal and industry data center practitioners will explore the various renewable energy technologies and efficiency measurement tools already well-adopted by the private sector that can help the US government achieve some of its ambitious sustainability goals related to buildings.
  
  
• “Greening” Federal IT Infrastructure Contracts and Purchasing: This panel will discuss emerging guidance and best practices for weaving sustainability language into government procurements.
  
  
• What's Powering the State-of-the-Art Data Center of Today?: This panel will explore the high-processing technology that is enabling data centers to use AI and data analytics to optimize their facilities’ performance.
  
  
• Bolstering National Security with Climate-Resilient Critical Infrastructure: Data centers form the backbone of the modern U.S. economy, and thus are among the nation’s most important critical infrastructure. This panel will discuss the adaptation and resiliency measures being taken to protect these important assets from a variety of threats, including climate.
  
  
• The Future of Data Centers and DCOI Metrics: The current DCOI memo is set to sunset at the end of Fiscal Year 2022, and GSA is interested in obtaining information about sustainability best practices for IT infrastructure that could help inform the development of new DCOI metrics. Two roundtables ‒ one with former government leaders and one with industry ‒ will discuss possible new metrics.