Dive Brief:
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The FBI last week broke ground on a $100 million, 100,000-square-foot data center in Pocatello, ID, FCW reported.
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The new facility is part of the Department of Justice Data Center Transformation Initiative, according to Data Center Knowledge, which aims to consolidate the FBI's several data centers into just three. The other locations are in Clarksburg, WV, and Washington, DC.
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In addition to doing away with software redundancies, the DOJ wants to shift its work capacity to the cloud, but a lack of funding has delayed that goal. The FBI said the new Idaho data center also will increase the agency's cybersecurity capabilities and will allow it to perform advanced analytics with more efficiency and at a lower cost.
Dive Insight:
The FBI and the General Services Administration (GSA) also are working on a plan to consolidate the FBI's DC headquarters after killing a land swap deal in July that would have given the Bureau a new, $2 billion office complex.
The GSA had reportedly narrowed its search to three sites in Maryland and Virginia and managed to secure an $834 million funding commitment from Congress for a new building, but lawmakers put conditions on the project such as capping federal investment at $2.11 billion. They also limited the size of the building to 2.1 million square feet and asked for detailed building reports.
The GSA's practice of developing new properties through land swaps came into question after the GSA Inspector General (IG) examined the custom and published the results in a March audit report.
The report faulted the GSA for not factoring in adequate risk and for overvaluing the properties it had offered up in these types of deals. The watchdog also said that, based on the GSA's past transactions, the agency didn't leave enough contingencies in place. That left it open to falling short on the cash needed to execute its property exchanges.
The two agencies told a Senate panel in early August that they would produce a new plan for an FBI headquarters within 120 days.
Following the IG's report, the GSA also canceled land swap plans for a new Department of Labor headquarters. The GSA was looking for 1 million square feet of space because its current home, the Frances Perkins Building, in DC, could be prohibitively expensive to upgrade.