The US Government Is Letting a Key Data Center Regulation Expire (wired.com)
- Reference: 0183902072
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/06/15/2017215/the-us-government-is-letting-a-key-data-center-regulation-expire
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-is-letting-a-key-data-center-regulation-expire/
> Despite the public backlash, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the government agency that sets guidance for how agencies implement policies in line with the president's agenda, is not providing any plans for how federal agencies should manage the sunset or continue to implement reporting beyond the timeline of the law. This, current and former workers at OMB and the General Services Administration (GSA) say, signals that the Trump administration is set to take an even more hands-off approach to data center oversight and regulation.
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> A replacement for the requirements laid out in FDCEA would, in other administrations, have been in the works for months ahead of its expiration. An employee with the GSA, the agency that oversees the government's IT services and helps to implement the FDCEA, says that the lack of any sort of plan is highly uncommon. The employee spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. "Never in the history of data center policies has a policy expired without another one having been painstakingly worked on for three years behind the scenes," says the GSA employee. "The technology has changed so much it's not about getting everything right, it's about doing the best they can and updating to a new policy. They claim they're going to make sure private companies pay their fare share, but they haven't explained how they'll do that."
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> [...] There has been a burst of data-center-related legislation introduced in Congress this year, from bills that mandate environmental reviews of data centers to bills designed to protect local moratoriums. However, it appears that none of these bills are designed to address the requirements in FDCEA, nor do they specifically address federally run or leased data centers. [...] A search of [2]reginfo.gov , the OMB website that contains reports on the president's Unified Agenda, also turns up nothing for the FDCEA.
"By letting this expire, OMB is going to enter into this new age of prioritizing rapid AI development over any sort of centralized control or rigorous standards," says the anonymous GSA employee who spoke to Wired. "In the absence of a new policy from OMB, [GSA] has no directive or measurable standards with which to point agencies towards managing data centers efficiently."
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-is-letting-a-key-data-center-regulation-expire/
[2] https://reginfo.gov/
Sgt Schultz: "I see nothing! I hear nothing!" (Score:4)
> potentially ending requirements for federal agencies to report on data-center efficiency, resilience, energy and water use, and contractor sustainability. ... signals that the Trump administration is set to take an even more hands-off approach to data center oversight and regulation.
Sounds like another case of if it's not measured, it doesn't happen, like when Trump [1]said [thehill.com] during COVID, "If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any." (Ignoring the obvious fact that they'd still exist, we just wouldn't know about them, noting that would have been better PR for him in the moment, but not so much in reality for the rest of us.)
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/502819-trump-on-coronavirus-if-we-stop-testing-right-now-wed-have-very-few-cases/
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Something else the states will have to do by themselves. You would think a warning sign like the sharp rise in electronics due to data centers consuming memory at an alarming rate would be a reason to at least consider regulation. But we are in the act of stopping the steal to make america great again lest we forget someone named benghazi is actually what the epstein files are about......
just another reason to impeach this piece of sh!t (Score:1, Flamebait)
need we say more? republicans find your tiny balls that you haven't seen in decades and for once in your miserable lives do you f/ing job!
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I'm not sure why Americans are upset. You got what you voted for.
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There are 535 of them.
Free market... (Score:4, Informative)
The idea is to let "The Free Market self-regulate".
In reality, this is code for "Give the tech billionaire oligarchs unrestricted free reign".
Re: Free market... (Score:1)
Free Market? This regulation is *exclusively* concerned with FEDERAL datacenters, it has nothing to do with datacenters in the private sector. How do I know? I read the first f'ing sentence in the summary:
> The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (FDCEA) is set to expire in September without an apparent replacement, potentially ending requirements for federal agencies to report on data-center efficiency, resilience, energy and water use, and contractor sustainability.
The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (FDCEA) - limited to just federal datacenters, not the new private sector datacenters popping up all around the country...
Conflating and mis-directing (Score:1)
The summary conflates Federal Data Center reporting with private industry datacenter reporting - the legislation that is subset for the end of FY'26 (September) is only concerned with federal government datacenters.
> . "Never in the history of data center policies has a policy expired without another one having been painstakingly worked on for three years behind the scenes,"
If the process of crafting the legislations replacement should have been worked on the past three years, doesn't that mean the process should have started under the previous (Biden/Harris) administration back in 2023?
The summary is misdirecting by trying to hold the current (Trump/Vance) administ
Misleading (Score:2)
1) The Law is only 3 years old. This isn't some massive change, as it has barely been on the books at all.
2) It only applies to Federal facilities, not general data centers, so has absolutely NOTHING to do with all the other bullshit hype around AI datacenters.
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Do you think the crabby lady at the DMV knows anything about cars, or has ever turned a wrench? No, she's sitting there to one day collect her pension and make your day there miserable.
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So in your state the lady at the DMV actually does the inspections? She gets the car on a lift and starts poking around herself?
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The DMV doesn't repair cars, and have you ever turned a wrench? A customer service person doesn't need to know anything about cars.
My experiences with my state's "DMV" over the last 20 years have been excellent with "crabby ladies" that are courteous and helpful. But you're MAGA, you feel entitled to say shitty things about everyone.
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in re: your signature, isn't Musk basically in bed with MAGA (or at least pretending to be lol) these days and saying shitty things about anything he doesn't like? Am I missing something?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
my posts don't have signatures and I don't see any in the other posts, I don't know what you are referring to.
Musk is an unhinged, drug addicted malignant sociopath, of course he says shitty things about anything he doesn't like. If he didn't, he would be nothing just like Trump. Musk is a top ten enemy of our country, and likely at the top of that list.
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I'm anti-MAGA as they come and I too have had the experience with crabby ladies at the DMV who very much do not want to do their jobs. Those jobs do not involve knowing anything about cars except for makes and models, and these days the software probably does most of the job from the VIN anyway. I have no direct experience of that, but plenty with recalcitrant DMV employees. IME they don't know, they don't want to know, and the person who knows isn't available.
Last time I needed to do anything involved (reg
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The current administration selects people specifically for incompetence. That is not true for any other administration in the country's history. Traditionally there most definitely are people in government that understand issues, now the issues they understand are how to grift and stack the deck. Whether that gets worse or better depends on whether people like you win or people with critical thinking skills do.
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The USA voted them in. FAFO.
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If the law was passed with a sunset clause, then the requirements for the report will end. Whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing, please don't tell me that you want to pay for the government to do things that its not required to do by law. I certainly don't.
If you think the law should been extended and/or re-enacted without a sunset clause, contact your legislators. Feel free to have your family, friends, and neighbors do the same thing.
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"Thank you for calling the US government. We're very sorry but we're quite busy right now running UFC fights and harassing Gavin Newsom. Next up is thinking up new distractions to amuse the Dear Leader. If you're worried about silly things like the cost of living or what's going to happen to your 401k, please call the psychic hotline for advice. If you'd like to hear this message in Spanish, please press 1 and an ICE team will be by shortly to deport you".
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We have VASTLY different ideas of "beautiful".
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Sounds like the precise argument why governments shouldn't be the ones regulating these things. Maybe private industry consortiums
For the same reasons that any internet standard goes through the IETF, not the FTC. Maybe there needs to be a SIG group that consists of all the major AI players, that can come up w/ the various conventions, best practices & so on. They can include in their coverage issues like Net Zero, privacy protection and the entire gamut