DOD Misses Data Center Plan Deadline Again

More than a month after its official due date, the Defense Department still hasn't released a detailed plan and progress report on its massive data center consolidation program.

The Defense Department owns about one-third of the government's roughly 2,800 official data centers. The government plans to close 1,000 or more of those centers by 2015.

The Office of Management and Budget ordered agencies to release detailed consolidation progress reports by Oct. 7. Defense missed that deadline but said its report was going through an internal approval process and would be out within 30 days.

As of Monday, 31 days later, the report still hadn't been released.

The government's original consolidation goal was to shutter 800 of 2,100 data centers by 2015 at a savings of roughly $3 billion. Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel broadened the definition of a federal data center in October, pulling smaller data rooms and closets into the mix. He promised to close at least 1,000 data centers out of the new total of 2,800.

Because federal data centers can vary widely in size, it's not clear whether VanRoekel's new plan will lead to less or more data center real estate being shuttered.

VanRoekel stepped back from the earlier goal of $3 billion in data center savings by 2015. He said the consolidation process will now save the government $5 billion overall but those savings won't be fully realized until later.

Some lower level information technology managers have expressed skepticism that the government's consolidation goals are achievable.