29/09/2008

The Digital Education Revolution Funding solution

SYDNEY – Monday 29 September, 2008 – The not-for-profit ‘Computers Off Australia’ campaign and labelling initiative, today announced that they have a solution to resolve the federal governments funding crisis with the states around the implementation and ongoing costs of the Digital Education Revolution.

According to Mark Winter, Founder of Computers Off Australia, “states can save upwards of 50%-70% off their PC power consumption, that in turn saves money and CO2 emissions”. “The states can then use these savings to fund the installation of the new PC’s being allocated to them through the Digital Education Revolution (DER)”.

“We know that the Rudd Government’s “Digital Educational Revolution” Policy will change the way that the education of our youth is delivered, however at what cost”. “With the promised $1.2 bn in funding, more schools will have access to more PCs than ever before. More PCs means more energy consumption, which means higher electricity bills and greater carbon emissions” Winter said.

“NSW was allocated 74,838 PC’s in round one of the DER and with this comes a power bill to run these PC’s of around $4.6 million dollars per annum, so you can understand why Verity Firth, the NSW Education Minister is upset and is wanting clarification on who will be paying the ongoing costs associated with the scheme.” Mark went onto say.

“The NSW Education Minister has the ability to self fund the shortfall and can save $3.8 million in power consumption by mandating simple measures that all PC’s within school are centrally shut down when not in use. This will not only have substantial savings for the states, allowing them to use these savings to fund the ongoing costs it will also assist with reducing Australia’s carbon footprint”, Winter concluded.

Computers Off Australia is calling on both the federal and state ministers to meet and directly address this issue prior to the upcoming COAG meeting next month.

These sentiments are also endorsed by the ACS Green IT Special Interest Group, a not-for-profit ICT Industry initiative to support IT enabled sustainable business. For more details please visit www.acs.org.au/greenit. 

Mark Winter will be addressing the 300-400 attendees at the national Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACEC’08) conference being held in Canberra this week. He will be directly addressing this issue and challenging both the state and federal governments to step up and take action not just on the issue of funding but on the bigger issue of climate change and the impact that the Digital Education Revolution will have on our environment.

Back to News