Rich Kenny | Aug. 19, 2024

The UK Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) brings together the Government and its supply chain to drive digital and ICT sustainability. The GDSA chair is Chris Howes, Defra’s Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) and the UK Government’s Senior Responsible Owner for Sustainable ICT. The GDSA is a collaborative group made up of existing or prospective digital and data suppliers to the UK Government, all with expertise and passion in digital sustainability.

GDSA is formed of working groups based on current key topics within digital sustainability, each working group will submit annual objectives to Defra for approval. These will be linked to Defra's core ICT Sustainability aims.

Once the objectives have been approved the working group will collaborate to realise these objectives, through ideation, problem solving and by developing proposals or suggestions for amendments to government policies and practices.

Each working group has a nominated lead, this lead will organise sessions and feed outputs into the GDSA governance team. The GDSA governance team acts as a support network for the working groups, reviews outputs of WG sessions, and reviews proposals for appraisal by the Government team, who will, if approved, support the delivery of any policy creation, revision or similar at a cross government level. The GDSA governance groups feed into a cross government digital sustainability steering group.

GDSA structure

GDSA is made up of three core Working Groups:

• Circular Economy


• Scope 3 Emissions


• Planetary Impact

The working groups have the opportunity to collaborate with other Government suppliers and interested parties to look for opportunities for improvement within Digital Sustainability, come up with proposals for new tooling, reporting methodologies, training, frameworks, and guidance on key societal issues. They raise awareness on digital sustainability with peers, and trial and pilot innovative approaches to streamline reporting.

These working groups feed into a GDSA Governance group (formerly supporting success group). Outputs of the GDSA working groups and governance group feed into a cross government committee and may lead to legislation reforms.