Earth Day

Agencies across government are marking Earth Day in a number of ways today. The Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration are holding an environmental fair in Foggy Bottom today. The Energy Secretary's doing a live chat on the Washington Post. And GovLoop, the social networking site for government employees, did a poll on how green government employees' workplace behavior is. 39 percent of respondents to the survey (which, grain of salt, had a small sample size of 148 people) reported that when they're making decisions about purchasing computer equipment, they take energy efficiency into account. But just half say they turn off their computer and monitor when they leave the office at night. Simply from a security perspective that seems unwise, and it's obviously a big energy drain, too. But if agencies can convince employees to make this relatively small change in their behavior, the gains for both the environment and security could be considerable.