The government has closed 39 federal data centers in the past five months and is on track to close nearly 100 more before the end of the year, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said at a White House event Wednesday.
Kundra's 25-point plan to reform federal IT management calls on the government to close more than one-third of the roughly 2,100 data centers in the next five years, either by consolidating data into existing centers or by moving information to rented data space in the cloud.
The 137 data centers that will be closed by the end of the year currently take up about five-and-a-half football fields, Kundra said.
One data center in Rockville, Md., alone was costing the government about $1.2 million a year in electricity costs before it was closed, he said.
Joseph Marks
Joseph Marks covers government technology issues, social media, Gov 2.0 and global Internet freedom for Nextgov. He previously reported on federal litigation and legal policy for Law360 and on local, state and regional issues for two Midwestern newspapers. He also interned for Congressional Quarterly’s Homeland Security section and the Associated Press’s Jerusalem Bureau. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in international affairs from Georgetown.
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