Wednesday 9 April 2008

Carbon footprint

Yesterday I was invited to speak at an NPSA (Non Professorial Staff Association) Open Meeting. Some questions are submitted in advance, others asked on the day. Interesting set of questions posed in advance, ranging from "How is CiCS perceived and what is its most important function", which was a bit like an interview question, to straightforward questions about opening hours in IT room and policies on data storage. It was reasonable well attended I think, and I hope was found to be helpful - I was ably supported by all of the Assistant Directors and I don't think any of the questions stumped us too much. We covered areas including our work on resilience of systems, support for teaching, learning and research, and the Collaboration Programme.

We also announced that we were going to be the first University in the UK to have a carbon footprint calculated for the IT Service. This will be done on behalf of HEEPI, and should give us an indication of what impact we're having on the environment, and how we might improve it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I noticed your presentation described CiCS as 'Corporate, Information and Computer Services'.

This was the first time I'd seen a comma in the department's name. Was this a type or are we about to be 'rebranded'? If so perhaps it should also have a full stop on the end? :)

Unknown said...

We've been looking at how we might change our name to reflect our new expanded role for a while, but we don't want to lose CiCS as everyone's used to it. So, we thought the comma might indicate that we're Corporate Services, Information Services, and Computing Services. I was trying it out as an experiment, and wondered if anyone would notice!