Asset management & E-waste: Opinions

In April, the Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, announced the appointment of UK efficiency expert, Sir Peter Gershon, to lead an independent review of the Australian Government's use and management of ICT. The terms of reference of the review are far reaching and of critical importance to our local industry. However given that it is an initiative of the Minister of Finance, its major thrust is cost-effective investment with an emphasis on consolidation.

The prospect of disposing of old IT equipment -- PCs, servers, storage gear, and the like -- may very well fill your heart with dread. After all, you're putting a lot of faith in a third party that the machines will be thoroughly wiped of confidential information, resold for a fair price, and, when applicable, properly disassembled, recycled, and disposed of. If your partners' practices end up being sloppy -- or downright criminal -- you could find yourself in regulatory and PR hell as confidential data protected by HIPAA or SarBox ends up in the wrong hands or 500 of your PCs end up in a landfill or river somewhere.

Doing the right thing makes sense from a business point of view as well as from an environmental and corporate social responsibility perspective.