More than 70 percent of agencies report that they have either maintained or increased their number of data centers, despite a federal initiative calling for reductions with a 2015 deadline, according to a recent survey.
The study from Alexandria, Va.-based MeriTalk and data storage company Actifio estimates that agencies will spend $16.5 billion simply storing non-productive data copies in the next decade. The Federal Chief Information Officer launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) in 2010 to prevent these cost overruns. Despite setting a goal of closing 800 federal data centers by next year, only six percent of agencies reported being on track with the initiative and grading themselves as a “A.” 
As for what’s causing the data overloads, the study found that too many applications were creating redundant data that costs agencies one-third of the IT budgets to store. Nearly 40 percent of federal data is stored as four or more copies.
To resolve the issues, respondents listed bigger budgets and better data management. Two-thirds of respondents plan to implement consolidation efforts in the future, including moving to the cloud.
Despite the negative findings, a press release accompanying the study praised Department of Defense, which has aggressively pursued consolidation at the department-wide and service levels.
“Leaders like Terry Halverson, the new CIO for the Department of Defense, are showing real leadership–going at the root causes for today’s Federal IT malaise,” said MeriTalk CEO Steve O’Keefe.
Though his service has made progress on data center closures, the Army’s CIO expressed how difficult the process can be at a conference this year. The Army appoints a general officer to ensure the data center is actually closed because “I don’t want to look away” and “have servers slide right back in,” said CIO/G-6 Michael Krieger.