US President Barack Obama issued a memo Thursday, ordering all federal agencies to accelerate their efforts to devise plans to get rid of excess properties, including, to a large extent, data centers. The order adds pressure on agencies to comply with the order Federal CIO Vivek Kundra issued in February, setting Aug. 30, 2010 as the deadline to submit final data center consolidation plans to the Office of Management and Budget for approval.

Obama also ordered that all agencies immediately adopt policies against expanding data centers beyond their current footprint.

In his memo, the president pointed out that while the private sector, over the past ten years, was able to reduce its data center footprint through technology upgrades, the US government only grew the amount of data centers it operates. This resulted in more energy consumption and more expenditures on real property, operations and maintenance.

"Past attempts at reducing the federal government