Press Releases

Washington, D.C. -- Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) announced this week’s edition of Budd’s Budget Busters, which highlights and exposes examples of federal government waste and proposes solutions to save taxpayer dollars.

An April 2019 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that the federal government owns and operates 12,166 data centers across the nation. These centers store an overwhelming amount of information in an inefficient, outdated way. There is already an initiative underway to consolidate these centers from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but of the 24 agencies that participate in the consolidation push, only 13 are slated to achieve their closure goals. While some cost savings have been achieved, much more needs to be done to achieve the full cost savings of $5.7 billion. 

Rep. Budd said in a statement:

“In an era of massive technological change, having the federal government maintain a vast network of data centers is both costly and inefficient. I applaud the agencies who have already met their goals and encourage those agencies who are behind to speed up their consolidation efforts. Congress should enact legislation that forces all federal agencies and departments to make regular reports on their progress toward data consolidation. Congress should also use an agency’s budget level as an incentive for moving their data to a 21st century system. This would save taxpayers billions and make our government more streamlined.”

“I’d like to thank the Republican Study Committee for providing their GEAR Task Force report, which has been an invaluable resource for identifying and highlighting government waste throughout the federal bureaucracy.”