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'Do we need all those buildings?' Norfolk CC's CIO on asking the difficult sustainability questions

Kurt Frary, CTO and Deputy Director of Information Management & Technology at Norfolk County Council explains how the council vets its suppliers sustainability credentials, and its path towards net zero

Norfolk County Council has a politically mandated requirement to be net zero by 2030. As Kurt Frary, CTO and Deputy Director of Information Management & Technology at the organisation tells Computing, that thread of sustainability runs through everything they do.

"We consider sustainability in everything we do," begins Frary. "One consideration today is do we return to the office at all? Do we need to put that traffic on our highways, and use that petrol? If we're not doing that, do we need all the buildings, and to use all of that power? And we're even involved in looking at our area's ten year plan around what we do with our highways more generally."

Despite his IT-focused role, Frary has been brought in to work with the highways team on future plans. He explains this evolved from his work on a previous project.

"I led the delivery of our Internet of Things network in Norfolk, and as part of that I worked with one of the highways engineers who wanted to put sensors in our roads to monitor for gritting. I challenged them a few times on their thinking in that project, so they asked me to get involved looking more widely at future plans."

Norfolk County Council's digital transformation - Turning the gas up to 11

His remit there is to look at innovation and sustainability, challenge the team and ask awkward questions. Given the frequency with which IT people need to cope with change, it's something you might expect would happen more often.

"I'm not there to talk about technology, but to challenge and ensure we're asking the right questions," Frary adds.

Another project, this one rather more IT-focused, is looking to refresh the end user computing estate for the council's 7,500 staff.

"We're making sure the contracts provide for sustainable equipment, which involves getting statements from suppliers and making sure they're not ticking boxes but demonstrating their sustainability credentials, that's one of the evaluation criteria."

However this is a notoriously difficult process, and one which can suffer from ‘greenwashing', where a supplier talks the talk but has actually achieved little towards sustainable goals. Frary admits that it's a challenge.

"We ask them to show certificates around their disposal practises, show how they look after the kit and how they retire it. You poke and ask questions around those things, to what extent depends on the size of the contract. It's a difficult thing for suppliers to answer and you have to be realistic. It's a bit like when someone drops off new fridge and takes the old one away. They claim they're recycling it but you don't really know."

Gerry Baker, digital transformation and print projects manager at the council adds that another project has brought electric vehicles and charging points into the council.

"One of my big areas is archive management," says Baker. "I have 50,000 boxes of archives to move around and digitise. We'll ultimately destroy lots of them, but in the meantime I've set a target to do all the moving around with electric vehicles to make that a sustainable process."

Baker is also looking at ways to destroy paper sustainably whilst driving down the print output.

"Covid has helped to reduce printing, but we're also happy to be the print police! We're out there looking at why people are printing. We get reports to tell us who the top ten printers are in the organisations, then we pursue them. It makes a big difference."

So what does this pursuit look like?

"In a big organisation there are always pockets of resistance. So you find people who are sending out forms to sign, and we just hit them over the head with Adobe Sign. There's this digital solution for this so we're digging them out."

Computing will run the Tech Impact Conference this year, exploring the relationship between tech and the climate - including case studies about the road to net zero, how to go green in your data centre and supply chain, and how to make small changes with a big impact. For those who are passionate about the planet - and those who are more wary - there has never been a better time to get involved.

'Do we need all those buildings?' Norfolk CC's CIO on asking the difficult sustainability questions

Kurt Frary, CTO and Deputy Director of Information Management & Technology at Norfolk County Council explains how the council vets its suppliers sustainability credentials, and its path towards net zero

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