The Office of Management and Budget is taking a more aggressive approach to data center consolidation, increasing the scope of the kind of data centers it will look to close to include all square footage, Federal Chief Information Officer Steve VanRoekel said today.
The new approach is to look at all data centers with more than 100 square feet of real estate. Previously, the government was looking only at data centers at 500 square feet and above.
“I’ve wanted to scope this project from everything to wiring closets to large data centers,” VanRoekel said. “We have to look at every corner and see how we can optimize our resources across the federal landscape.”
VanRoekel said that tomorrow agencies will post their updated data center consolidation plans. By the end of the year, OMB will release an agency-by-agency breakdown of all the data center locations.
OMB is also launching a new data center cost model that applies an apples-to-apples approach to data center consolidation. It will look at the way people manage and budget and drive behavior.
“This new model will really give us a view across the entire government,” VanRoekel said, “but it will also give the CIOs a view across the agencies to give a full scope of the data center initiative.”
VanRoekel said the government is on pace to close 472 data centers by the end of 2012, up from the previous announced goal of closing 373. The government has also increased its long-term goal to close 800 data centers by 2015 to close 962 data centers.
As for the E-Gov fund, VanRoekel said that he is talking with members of Congress about the importance of the fund and the open data initiative. He said that programs like the data center tool have risen out of that, which has given the federal government great momentum on a number of issues.
“Technology is part of the solution for almost every problem facing government,” VanRoekel said.
