Why the US Government has so many data centers

[sean at donelan.com (Sean Donelan)]

On Sat, 12 Mar 2016, Roland Dobbins wrote:
>> The U.S. Government has an odd defintion of what is a data center, which 
>> ends up with a lot of things no rational person would call a data center.
>
> There's also a case to be made that governmental organizations really 
> oughtn't to have servers just lying around in random rooms, and that those 
> rooms are de facto government data centers, whether those who're responsible 
> for said rooms/servers know it or not . . .

If that is the goal, don't call it data center optimization.  That is 
server optimization.

When you say "data center" to an ordinary, average person or reporter; 
they think of big buildings filled with racks of computers.  Not a lonely 
server sitting in a test lab or under someone's desk.