Unisa CIO and Vice-Principal of ICT Mathabo Nakene-Mginqi says the university embeds sustainability into IT decision-making from procurement through to responsible end-of-life asset disposal.
The adoption of green IT in South Africa has been slowed by a lack of policy and governance and vendor readiness. Still, sustainability in IT is no longer limited to energy efficiency or green data centres, with significant progress being made.
At Unisa, IT equipment lifecycle management is embedded into governance, procurement and disposal processes and is accelerated by cross-functional collaboration and early-stage decision-making.
According to Unisa CIO and vice-principal of ICT Mathabo Nakene-Mginqi, responsible end-of-life management starts well before assets reach disposal. “We have a sustainability office in the university, and as part of our asset lifecycle we identify which assets are reaching disposal,” she says.
“We then have a stakeholder forum focused specifically on dealing with those assets and agreeing on what the responsible disposal mechanism will be,” she explains.
Lifecycle thinking at the investment stage
Disposal itself is handled outside the ICT team, but Mathabo says ICT forms part of the value chain alongside sustainability, governance and asset management stakeholders. “It is a consolidated and coordinated effort from different stakeholders when it comes to disposing of that asset class.”
However, she emphasises that sustainability does not begin at disposal but rather at procurement and investment decision-making.
“We have identified standard clauses that go into our contracts, some for governance reasons and some linked directly to sustainability. We then work with legal and supply chain management to ensure these clauses are compulsory. We only negotiate on them if a service provider asks for a different consideration, and then we decide whether that is acceptable,” she adds.
Beyond contractual terms, Mathabo positions lifecycle thinking as part of Unisa’s broader technology investment discipline. She shares a few basic questions she asks the ICT team when looking to invest in new technologies, noting that these considerations include sustainability:
- What problem are we solving?
- What is the technology roadmap that will help us see the big picture in a few years’ time?
- What is the ROI?
By defining service lifespans and outcomes early, Unisa can understand the full set of products that support each service and what those products imply for maintenance, upgrades and eventual disposal.
“If we are clear on how long we are in the service from a lifecycle perspective, then we understand what it means when those assets reach end of life and what must be done,” she explains.
This approach also reduces unnecessary procurement. “Some products we need to buy but we may be able to modify something we have in-house for others. That thinking has to happen before we get to a buy decision. By the time we get to procurement, sustainability and lifecycle considerations are already built into what we want and why.”
In this model, procurement teams act as custodians of the process rather than decision-makers on sustainability outcomes.
“The procurement team is a means to an end and a vehicle for execution because we have already thought through the lifecycle implications, we can answer their questions easily. Infusing sustainability and lifecycle aspects has to happen at the time of investment decision-making, not at the time we want to buy. It is too late then,” she concludes.
