The Department of Energy is the government agency in charge of making sure the nation is more energy efficient, but it unfortunately has not gotten its own house in order. The department's inspector general, in a newly released audit, found that in one instance, $1.6 million more was spent in fiscal 2008 on power costs than necessary.

Although the federal regulations require agencies to turn off PC's and monitors when idle, the inspector general said the Energy Department did not ensure that these features were enabled on 46,345 of its own PCs.

Energy's CIO Tom Pyke said he will make amends for the oversight, and obviously supports efforts to improve the energy efficiency of federal operations.

This is an issue that every CIO should be paying attention to because it could happen to you, too. If you think you're bleeding power, get the right people into your shop to check it out. Even if you have no reason to believe something is amiss, it's always good to check it out, especially if it is costing the government money.

For more on DOE's lapse:
- see this InformationWeek article