From Policy to Practice: How ChromeOS Flex Supports Your the GDSA Roadmap Implementation

The latest Greening Government Commitments ICT report reveals the challenge's scale: government ICT emissions reached 340,285 tonnes CO2e in 2023-24. While overall waste volumes dropped 6%, the percentage sent to landfill increased from 0.8% to 1.3%—evidence that low-effort wins are being achieved, but the difficult work of high-value recovery remains unresolved.

In June, the GDSA’s Circular Economy Working Group released a comprehensive recommendations paper identifying two dominant barriers preventing ICT circularity: finance and security. With thousands of aging devices that are expensive to replace, risky to keep running and difficult to dispose of securely, IT leaders are challenged with clawing back sustainability goals with little departmental budget available to enable their success.

The GDSA's Dual Barriers

Traditional government budgeting focuses on capital expenditure rather than Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), creating disincentives for circular options. Meanwhile, security teams default to physical destruction or indefinite storage. The GDSA paper confirms that, without certified alternatives meeting NCSC guidance, security professionals have no viable options beyond hoarding or destruction.

Taking the GDSA recommendations on board, local authorities are empowered to shift procurement to TCO modeling and creating Value Recovery Pathways (VRPs), ensuring disposal revenue returns to IT budgets. ChromeOS Flex makes this transition viable by delivering quantifiable operational savings.

ChromeOS Flex: The Technical Solution to Both Barriers

ChromeOS Flex directly addresses the GDSA's identified barriers by transforming aging hardware into modern, secure, cost-effective assets. This cloud-based operating system installs on existing PCs and Macs, extending device lifecycles while generating the measurable evidence that finance and security teams require.

Devices running ChromeOS Flex consume 19% less energy on average than comparable operating systems, directly reducing operational costs while contributing to departmental Net Zero targets. For organisations managing thousands of devices, this compounds into substantial savings.

More significantly, ChromeOS Flex tackles Scope 3 emissions, the largest component of the government's ICT footprint. The GGC report confirms that 33% of government ICT emissions come from end-user devices, with embodied carbon from manufacturing representing the dominant impact. ChromeOS Flex can deliver emissions reductions of up to 83% and e-waste reductions of 100% in the first year by extending device lifecycles rather than manufacturing replacements.

Independent analysis by Px3 demonstrates the potential. Applying lifespan extension through ChromeOS Flex achieves a 50% reduction in device procurement costs, 73% reduction in utility costs, 68% carbon footprint abatement and 81% e-waste avoidance. These figures provide the auditable TCO data finance teams need to justify the GDSA-mandated shift from CapEx to lifecycle thinking.

By breathing new life into devices - including those over eight years old - departments can defer multi-million-pound replacement cycles, retain disposal revenue within IT budgets and demonstrate compliance with Greening Government Commitment Objective 5.1’s annual percentage improvements in procuring refurbished ICT.

Resolving the Security Standoff with Built-In Protection

The GDSA's proposed "Blended Security and Sustainability Focus Group" requires proven solutions that enable CISOs to approve secure reuse. ChromeOS Flex provides exactly this: a security architecture that transforms vulnerable legacy machines into protected, cloud-managed devices.

ChromeOS Flex employs sandboxing technology that isolates processes to prevent malware from spreading across the system. Executables are blocked by default, eliminating the primary vector for ransomware and malicious code. Automatic background updates ensure devices remain patched without user intervention or IT overhead. For security teams paralysed by the choice between destruction and sustainability, ChromeOS Flex resolves the conflict by enabling high-value reuse while maintaining NCSC-aligned protection.

This security-first approach directly supports the GDSA's recommendation for centralised asset management. Rather than devices languishing in decentralised "storage limbo," ChromeOS Flex enables departments to confidently process legacy estates through bulk conversion programs. The result: fulfillment of Greening Government Commitment Objective 4.2 (mapping and accounting for all ICT at end of life) while preventing the ad hoc hoarding that currently undermines circularity.

The Jumpstart Proof of Concept: Generating Implementation Evidence

The GDSA roadmap remains advisory until departments produce tangible evidence that sustainable alternatives meet rigorous standards. This is where structured proof-of-concept initiatives become essential.

The 30-day Jumpstart programme converts 50 existing devices to ChromeOS Flex, providing:

• Financial validation: TCO measurement against your actual estate, not theoretical projections.
• Security verification: Documented deployment within your security architecture, empowering CISOs with the internal case study required to approve secure reuse alternatives.
• Operational proof: 50 Chrome Enterprise Upgrade licenses, full setup, configuration and enrollment, plus two days of tailored staff training to ensure user adoption and remove implementation barriers.
• GGC readiness: The ChromeOS Readiness Tool helps identify additional devices suitable for conversion, enabling rapid scaling post-pilot.

From Commitment to Action

The public sector's circular ICT transition depends on solutions that simultaneously satisfy finance, security and sustainability requirements. ChromeOS Flex demonstrates this is achievable, transforming the GDSA's policy framework into measurable, cost-saving, security-enhancing operational reality.

Contact Getech today to undertake your Jumpstart Proof of Concept and generate the evidence your organisation needs to implement the GDSA roadmap.