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!"

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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.

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."

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 [fcw.com]

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!

Re:The Slashdot test: Failed

[hedwards]

Not really. If you're going to blame anybody for wasting money, it really ought to be the GOP. They're the ones that insisted that giving money to the rich in the form of tax cuts would result in increased tax receipts. Not to mention the fact that they were the ones that engaged in 2 off the books wars and numerous other accounting fixes to make it appear that they weren't overspending by as much as they were.

As far as cuts go, if the rich would pay their fair share, even if it's just proportional to the amount of wealth they control, the cuts wouldn't need to be as deep to services.

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.

Re:Timing...

[LordLimecat]

Republicans dont care if Bush started it, in their eyes anything Obama does is bad, even if it is along their beliefs or party lines

Were that a fair accusation to level as broadly as you have-- and its not fair-- I would remark that it would be a kind of tit-for-tat for everything Bush has taken the blame for that isnt his fault.

For example--

• Starting 2 wars without congressional authorization (he had full authorization for both; Obama has started a new war with NO congressional authorization)
• Implementing the full body scanners (these were done under Obama's watch, with an Obama-elected TSA head and DHS head)
• Causing the market to crash (most economic gurus Ive heard plant the blame squarely on housing loan requirements instituted under Clinton)

And so on. To turn around and act like Dems dont do the exact same crap that you accuse "Republicans" (however broadly you mean that) of is just hypocritical. This is why I can barely tolerate watching politics on TV or listening to it on the radio. Its not just Dems or Republicans who pull this kind of blame game crap and claiming that the other side is retarded and politicking and being obstructionists; but the people who do it need to shut up and get out of politics, because this isnt how adults are supposed to have rational discussion.

For someone to come onto slashdot and to blindly point at their political foes and declare THEM to be irational, fallacious monsters is just ridiculous. I would propose that until you are able to see-- and call foul on-- the shenanigans that your OWN side commits, you are in NO position to accuse others of being irrational.