The US government has identified 178 federal-agency data centers it plans to close in 2012 as part of the government-wide data center consolidation initiative, whose target is to shut down more than 800 facilities by the end of 2015.

The government marked 137 data centers to be closed in 2011, and according to the latest data the government released through its web portal Data.gov, 114 facilities are targeted for closure before the end of the year.

The consolidation initiative was spearheaded by the government's outgoing CIO Vivek Kundra, who kicked off the effort in September 2009. In this week's memo to all agency CIOs, Kundra wrote that the purpose of the initiative was to "reverse the historic growth of federal data centers."

Follow this link to read our feature on Kundra's recent assessment of the overall state of federal IT in US

In October 2010, agencies completed a comprehensive inventory of their data centers and concluded that the government was operating more than 2,000 facilities. The consolidation initiative, Kundra wrote, "seeks to curb this unsustainable increase in the number of data centers by reducing the cost of data center hardware, software and operations"

In addition to closing data centers, the initiative includes shifting IT investments to more efficient computing platforms, promoting the use of "green IT" by reducing overall energy and real estate footprint of government data centers, and increasing the government's IT security posture.

For a full list of data centers that either have been closed or are targeted for closure between 2010 and 2012, follow this link

Here's a map of 217 of them provided by the government: