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All digital services need to be delivered sustainably

All services need to be delivered sustainably.

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Summary

All services need to be delivered sustainably.

Rationale

Digital services need to be ‘resilient’. That is - robust and able to withstand and respond to changes arising out of the environmental emergency. 

The impact of digital services on 'embodied emissions' or ecological and social impact from mining and manufacture (that is, the environmental cost of producing and disposing of IT equipment) should be considered. 

Design principles

Minimise data retention and resolution

Code efficiently

Limit architectural obsolescence

Provide access that minimises end user device numbers

in favour of promoting access to our services via low energy devices, such as tablet and mobile.

Carefully consider the benefits of utilising artificial intelligence or machine learning

to ensure benefit outweighs energy requirements

Implication

Architects should consider the impact of climate change in their work from three perspectives, in addition to the other principles.

Direct impacts
  • Set non-functional requirements that meet your optimum specification while balancing commercial impact
  • Design services that make best use of resources to reduce cost and carbon emissions
Impact on suppliers
  • Select suppliers considering their carbon footprint 
  • Work with the supply chain to reduce impact 
Impact on customers
  • Promote the move to environmentally sustainable cloud services 
  • Promote digital by default as a principle, reducing CO2 in health and care business processes 
  • Minimise the impacts for the health and care system, such as client devices and two-factor authentication

Last edited: 26 September 2022 5:13 pm

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NHS architecture principles

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Chapters

  1. NHS architecture principles
  2. All digital services need to be delivered sustainably
  3. Put our tools in modern browsers
  4. Internet first
  5. Public cloud first
  6. Build a data layer with registers and APIs
  7. Adopt appropriate cyber security standards
  8. Use platforms
  9. Put user needs first
  10. Interoperability with open data and technology standards
  11. Reuse before buy/build