Federal data center consolidation plan goes awry with 2,000 ‘forgotten’ facilities

Federal data center consolidation plan goes awry with 2,000 ‘forgotten’ facilities

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/11/20/federal-data-center-consolidation-plan-goes-awry-as-2000-facilities-are-forgotten/

by Mike Wheatley | Nov 20, 2015 | 0 comments

t turns out that the U.S government’s much-hyped data center consolidation program has spectacularly failed, despite earlier claims that federal agencies had saved around $3.6 billion between 2011 and 2014 by closing down data centers and migrating to the cloud.

The stark news came after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed it had been made aware of the existence of an additional 2,000 data centers it previously hadn’t been told about, The Register reported.

The Congressional Subcommittees on Information Technology and Government Operations stumbled on the findings earlier this month when it called a number of hearings to check on how the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) was progressing. That initiative was launched back in 2010 as part of a plan to cut the government’s IT spending, but Congress discovered that most agencies were failing to meet a requirement to cut the number of data centers they run.

The GAO says that although some agencies have closed down their data facilities, its been forced to add 2,000 data centers to the cumulative total. It seems that these facilities had not been included in some Federal agencies’ initial reporting to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

“In a series of reports, we found that, while data center consolidation could potentially save the federal government billions of dollars, weaknesses existed in the execution and oversight of the initiative,” GAO IT management issues director David Powner revealed to Congress.