Government has shuttered 50 data centers since May

The government has shuttered 318 data centers since 2010, 50 of them in the past three months, according to updated figures from the Office of Management and Budget released Friday.

Agencies plan to close 56 more centers by the end of September and 363 by the close of September 2013, according to a spreadsheet posted to the government open data platform Data.gov.

The government had closed 268 data centers as of the last update April 30. Friday’s update included all data centers closed as of Aug. 3.

OMB plans to shut down about 40 percent of the government’s original stock of roughly 3,100 data centers by the end of 2012. The program is expected to save $5 billion, though those savings won’t all have accrued by the 2015 deadline, federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel has said.

The initiative is aimed at modernizing the government’s computer storage by shifting to more efficient consolidated data centers and to vendor-operated computer clouds.

(Image via Eimantas Buzas/Shutterstock.com)