Introducing green IT services across public sector computer networks can be problematic because of the changes required, it has been claimed.

Editor of multimedia publisher BusinessGreen.com James Murray explained that green IT targets across the public sector are "much harder to achieve".

He said: "Like any sort of big new strategy, it takes quite a long time to filter down through to the people at the coalface actually doing the work.

"The net result is that a lot of the management structures and the strategies that are required still aren't in place."

His comments follow the publication of a Path to Greener Government report published by Cisco and Global Action Plan, which found 60 per cent of national government respondents were not even aware the government had a green ICT strategy.

The report also indicated that if the implementation of the strategy is not sped up it could impact on the government's Carbon Reduction Commitment.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.