A number of Houston tech jobs (Click here ^[1]) could soon be lost as the federal government closes hundreds of data centers throughout the nation.

The federal government recently announced its plans to close 137 of the nation's data centers by the end of this year in an effort to make America's IT infrastructure cheaper and more efficient. Two of those data centers are located at NASA Johnson Space Center ^[2] in Houston.

A total of 39 data centers have already been closed and the remainder are slated for closure by the end of the year. The closures are expected to affect a total of 16 federal agencies throughout the country, although it's not yet known exactly how many jobs will be cut as part of this process.

According to an article by The Wall Street Journal ^[3], the agencies to be affected by the closures include:

• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Energy
• Department of Health and Human Services
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of the Interior
• Department of Justice
• Department of Labor
• Department of State
• Department of Transportation
• Department of the Treasury
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• General Services Administration
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• U.S. Agency for International Development

As part of a larger plan to reduce overall government spending, the federal government is planning to close 800 data centers by 2015, a move that would potentially save $3 billion per year. The number of federal data centers has grown from 432 in 1998 to 2,094 today.

The majority of those data centers are used to store data and servers and for networking purposes. However, many of those facilities have surpassed their budgets and are not used enough, with experts estimating that only 27 percent of a typical data center is used.