Obama Administration Closing Recently Opened Datacenters

An anonymous reader writes "After quadrupling the number of government datacenters over his first three years, Obama's Administration is reversing course and closing the most recently opened datacenters. With one datacenter reportedly the size of three football fields, my question is what happens to all those recently purchased servers? Will the government hold a server fire sale? Count me in!"

Comments

Timing...

[BWJones]

The wording of this post makes it seem as though the data centers were initiated via policies of the Obama administration. However, the reality is that the data center expansion occurred during the policy of the previous Bush administration with funding requested in 2006, approved in 2007 and implementation initiated in 2008 a full year before the Obama administration took office. The Obama administration approved the continuation of the policy in 2009 and 2010 and are currently altering the data center strategy.

Re:Timing...

[astrodoom]

So what you're saying is that the qaudrupling over the last 2 years WAS from the obama administration's continuation of the policy, but they didn't start the policy?

idk, I'm all for specificity, but that seems a bit nitpicky. Either way, they're cutting the data centers now, which is a great move for cutting waste since they're running at 27% utilization. Sad that it means cutting the jobs associated with those data centers, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Re:Timing...

[bennomatic]

Have you ever worked for an organization larger than 1000 employees? Larger than 10,000? I don't know how many people are employed by the federal government, but it's a lot. And there are a lot of programs that have interwoven dependencies. Whether you think that the government should be smaller or not, whether you think that all the programs are worthwhile or not, big decisions have big implications, and it's not usual for large organizations to take several years to make a decision and even longer to implement them.

To that end, it's entirely possible that these datacenters were planned during the Bush years based on policy decisions made in the Clinton era, which were in turn affected by the Reagan/Bush1 years. Wings of a butterfly and all.

The point of the GP was not, as far as I can tell, "BUSH BAD OBAMA GOOD!", but rather, "This is not an example of a bad decision made in haste and reversed in haste."

Stimulus.

[wsxyz]

After all of the equipment is sold for scrap at pennies on the dollar, they'll build the datacenters again. That's called stimulus in action.

Re:Obama wastes taxpayer money?

[Aryden]

Yepp, his fault that something that was approved, budgeted and begun before his administration was done... (this is my glare face)

He approved the continuation based on being told that these centers were necessary for data retention and they aren't. So they are getting closed. As any good business person would do when faced with budget restrictions.

Cloud First

[recoiledsnake]

This is probably related to the "Cloud First" strategy adopted by the outgoing CIO Vivek Kundra. http://fcw.com/articles/2011/02/28/buzz-cloud-computing-and-budget.aspx

Re:The Slashdot test: Failed

[Chris Mattern]

Actually, the article specifically says that servers quadrupled in the past two years under a policy approved by Obama (although it was started by Bush). So it was Obama who bought those servers. But, what the heck, you don't need to think when you know it's all Bush's fault!

Deactivated systems will not be sold in the US

[ebunga]

Due to national security, servers will be divided into those that hosted classified materials, and those that did not. Those that contained classified materials will be labeled as Securely Ensure Nonrecoverable Destruction To Ostensibly Completely Hinder Internationally Notorious Agents, but that's a bit long, so really they will be labeled with the acronym SENDTOCHINA. They will be melted down locally and then sold for scrap. Those that do not contain classified materials will be sold to China to help ease their demand for computing resources that they already build. These will be labeled Mutually Economic Lateral Trade. That too is a bit long, so the systems that should be sold to China will be labeled MELT.

Oh come on

[geekoid]

Obama move policy to a smarter government.
republicans cut funding
Obama's fault.

The republicans are giong after ANYHTING Obama does. Why isn't everyoen getting pissed at that? This isn't a sie of the isle complaint. Even when Republican create a bill, and then when Obama agrees and says will sign sign it, the republicans who created the bill back out. WTF?

There is a difference between having a debate and simple going against something because the president is for it.

They would rather the country burned to the ground, the Obama getting elected again.
I've been paying attention to politics since Reagan, and never has it been like this.

Add to that a bunch of people who refuse to accept the established fact that austerity during a recession never works. Look at history.

It's stupid.