Digital agency Perago and the science park M-SParc join forces with Centre for Digital Public Services to investigate how technology can support Wales’s climate aims
29 April 2022
CDPS is pleased to announce a contract award to the digital agency Perago and the science park M-SParc to work with us on a discovery into technology’s role in helping Wales to reach net zero carbon emissions.
With CDPS, Perago and M-SParc will form a multidisciplinary team for the ‘tech net zero’ discovery. (A discovery is the first, research phase of an Agile project.) Among the team’s goals for the discovery, lasting 12 weeks, are to understand:
- how technology can be used to support better provision of public services, while also meeting net zero aims and servicing users’ needs
- the sustainability considerations involved in designing and delivering digital services
- what other nations are doing to achieve net zero targets in the digital and wider technology arena
- what guidance already exists about technology’s role in reaching net zero
Sustainability choices
Some sustainability choices that individual services make are already known. For example, an organisation could assess carbon emissions resulting from its technology hosting arrangements. Or it could weigh up the environmental impact of using specific channels (for example, online vs phone applications) when providing a service.
These are just 2 examples – we hope this discovery will highlight many more, as well as what choices can be made at an organisational level. The discovery might also reveal situations where technology is not the right solution to reaching net zero.
The discovery team will be working in an Agile, iterative way, sharing our work publicly as we go along and speaking to people from across the public sector in Wales to gather information and insights.
Perago and M-SParc
The Welsh digital agency Perago has long experience in helping organisations to build better public services. M-SParc is Wales’s first science park, operating from Bangor University. It promotes science, focusing on low carbon energy and the information and communication technology sector. M-SParc intends to become the first science park in Wales to achieve net zero carbon emissions.
Pryderi Ap Rhisiart, managing director of M-SParc, said:
‘We’re proud to partner with Perago to deliver this exciting project. We at M-SParc have ambitious aims to become the nation’s first net zero science park, and we’re already exploring how we can innovate … to … reach those targets.
‘What makes this project with Perago especially exciting is the prospect of exploring the roles and opportunities that technology and the wider digital sector have in driving Wales towards our net zero aims … and we’re looking forward to getting to work with our partners to deliver this over the next 12 weeks’
How 3 can equal 0
Wales has a 3 stage plan to reach net zero by 2030. The first part of this journey to a greener, stronger Wales covers 2021 to 2025. The tech net zero discovery will support this stage of the plan (and beyond) by investigating how innovation and technology can decrease carbon emissions within the public sector.
One study found, for example, that the world’s data centres alone will soon have a bigger carbon footprint than the entire aviation industry – one sign that we must harness technology in the right way to reduce its impact.
In championing the move to digital, the Welsh public sector has a responsibility to address the environmental implications of such a transformation head on. That is exactly what this discovery will do.
Net zero standards
CDPS will use the discovery findings to create standards, policies and guidance for the Welsh public sector on using technology to decrease the environmental impact of services.
We cannot wait to get started and welcome Perago and M-SParc on board for this exciting and important discovery.
The discovery team will be blogging regularly, so watch this space!
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