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Departmental E-mail

Volume 471: debated on Tuesday 29 January 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will take steps to reduce the number of hard copies of e-mails printed by officials in his Department. (179465)

The Department for International Development has already taken various steps to reduce waste arisings, including waste from paper, and has met the Government target to reduce waste by 5 per cent. by 2010, relative to 2004-05 levels. For instance, DFID regularly takes action to raise staff awareness on minimising waste, including paper, through notices on our internal intranet and poster campaigns. In 2005 we introduced an Electronic Document and Records Management Database, and the training on the system actively promotes retaining only key e-mails electronically. During a recent IT upgrade DFID reduced the number of printers by over 30 per cent.