# A Decade of US Data Center Rules Is Quietly Lapsing as Washington Goes All-In on AI

> The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act, which sets the rules for how US agencies build, secure and power their data centers, is set to expire this fall — and the Trump administration appears to have no replacement planned, just as AI sends data center demand soaring.

**Type:** article · **Category:** Politics · **Published:** 2026-06-15 · **Source:** TrendKia
**Canonical:** https://trendkia.com/en/politics/ai-ki-raphtara-ke-bicha-amerika-ka-bara-phaisala-deta-sentara-para-bana-ahama-ka-1009 · **Language:** English
**Tags:** FDCEA, data centers, OMB, AI infrastructure, data center regulation, Trump executive order, federal IT policy, energy and water use

A quietly ticking clock inside the US government is about to run out. The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (FDCEA), the law that for the past few years has dictated how federal agencies build, secure and power their data centers, is scheduled to sunset this fall — and the Trump administration has signaled it does not plan to put anything in its place.

## A regulation lapsing at the worst possible moment
The timing is striking. Data centers — the power-hungry, water-thirsty buildings that keep the artificial intelligence boom running — have become one of the most contentious local issues in America. A Gallup poll conducted in May found that more than 70 percent of Americans do not want these facilities built in their own communities. The opposition is unusually broad: from Utah to Georgia, residents on both the right and the left have joined forces to push back against the rapid spread of data centers.

Yet even with that public anger, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — the agency that tells other agencies how to carry out policy in line with the president's priorities — has issued no plan for what happens once FDCEA lapses. There is no guidance on how agencies should handle the wind-down, and nothing on whether the reporting the law required should continue. To current and former staff at OMB and the General Services Administration (GSA), that silence is the message: Washington intends to step even further back from overseeing and regulating data centers.

## 'Never in the history of data center policies'
Normally, a successor to a law like FDCEA would already be deep in development long before the original ran out. A GSA employee — the agency that manages the government's IT services and helps put FDCEA into practice — told TrendKia that having no replacement ready is almost unheard of. The employee spoke to TrendKia 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," the GSA employee says. "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."
Demand is only heading one way. As agencies are pushed to adopt more AI tools, the appetite for data centers and supporting infrastructure will keep climbing. The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group, projects that data centers could be consuming at least 9 percent of all electricity in the US by 2030.

## How the rules were built — and why they mattered
To grasp what is being lost, it helps to look back. Before 2010, there was little federal oversight of how agencies built and ran their data centers, which existed long before AI went mainstream. As government work moved online, each agency simply built what it needed. Many of those facilities went up with no regard for energy efficiency or budget limits, and some — despite holding valuable data — ended up in risky spots. One former OMB worker told TrendKia about a data center placed underground in a flood zone.

During Barack Obama's first term, the government launched a years-long campaign to track and clean up these facilities, retiring some and shifting their data to cloud services. A landmark 2014 IT reform law added a drive to consolidate and more closely watch data centers, handing agencies targets meant to save money, protect data and keep tabs on energy use. FDCEA, passed in 2023, carried much of that work forward.

> "An extraordinary effort has been put into this over many years," says Clare Martorana, who served as the federal chief information officer in the Biden administration. "An enormous amount of this ecosystem was cleaned up, and the government saved billions of dollars."

## What disappears when FDCEA goes
Current and former officials told TrendKia that FDCEA and the rules before it were written for a different era — one centered on resilience, sustainability and cost control. The AI age, they argue, calls for a fresh strategy on how involved the federal government should be in data center construction. As the nation's single largest employer, the government's choices about how and why it builds facilities to store its own data weigh heavily on the wider national build-out, especially around water and electricity.

Scrapping FDCEA strips away guardrails for any agency wanting to upgrade an existing data center or build a new one. Energy efficiency is one of the biggest. Under FDCEA, OMB requires agencies to bring in a data center energy specialist to advise on the most energy-efficient design and to factor in water use; agencies must also report on the sustainability of off-site contractor facilities. Let the law lapse, and those requirements to weigh how federal data centers and their contractors consume power and water vanish.

FDCEA carried a built-in weakness: unlike earlier rules, it came with no money to help agencies comply, so every agency's chief information officer (CIO) had to scrape together the funds on their own. Without the law and OMB applying pressure, says Matt Triner, founder of the Washington, DC-based IT consultancy Hunter Strategy, "that effectively means to me that they're giving a lot more discretion to CIOs and what they emphasize in their reporting." That inconsistency between agencies, he warns, can also introduce errors. And while FDCEA was an act of Congress, Triner notes the administration "absolutely could have issued this with OMB memoranda and circulars. That is how most at least executive agency reporting is done."

## Less reporting, less visibility
The administration has also shut down public IT monitoring tools such as the Federal IT Dashboard, which carried details on government contracts and spending on data centers and cloud services. With it gone, future deals between the government and private companies for data center capacity become harder to trace.

> "They're going to stop collecting IT data," the GSA employee says. "That's a feature, not a bug."
That loss of transparency could reach into cybersecurity too, Triner says. FDCEA's expiry would not automatically lower security requirements, but with fewer reporting obligations there is less visibility into what protections are actually in place and which problems are or are not being addressed. "Visibility is a big part of security, and you're stripping away a lot of tools that were used to make sure that it happens," he says.

## An executive order driving the shift
The administration's full-throated backing of data center expansion took shape early in Donald Trump's second term. In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order putting the federal government's weight behind the US build-out, directing agencies to find ways to "utilize federally owned land and resources for the expeditious and orderly development of data centers."

That same order rolled back a late Biden-era directive to "[advance] United States Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure," which had pushed clean energy — including on federal land used to power on-site data centers — and required builders to draw up sustainability plans for water and energy use. Sources told TrendKia that OMB's decision to let FDCEA simply lapse is meant to match the spirit of that July order.

## Is anyone working on a replacement?
TrendKia contacted the offices of the three senators who originally sponsored FDCEA to ask whether there are any plans to renew or replace it. Congress has seen a flurry of data-center bills this year — from measures mandating environmental reviews to ones protecting local moratoriums — but none appear to tackle FDCEA's specific requirements, and none deal directly with data centers the government runs or leases.

> "Data centers across the country house critical and sensitive information, and we need to ensure they are protected from increased cyber threats and natural disasters," Senator Jacky Rosen, who sponsored FDCEA when it passed in 2023, said in an emailed statement. "My team and I are aware that the Federal Data Center Enhancement Act is set to sunset this fall and are looking at all options to ensure Americans' personal information housed in data centers continue to be secure."
Rosen's office would not say what those options are. A search of reginfo.gov, the OMB site that publishes the president's Unified Agenda, turns up nothing on FDCEA. The White House did not reply to requests for comment. A GSA spokesperson pointed TrendKia to OMB, whose spokesperson said it would fulfill all statutory requirements.

## The bottom line

> "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," the GSA employee says. "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."

## What this means for you
**What this means for you:**

- **If you track AI and data privacy:** With FDCEA expiring and the Federal IT Dashboard shut down, there will be far less public visibility into how US federal data centers are secured and where people's personal information is stored.
- **If you care about energy and water costs:** Dropping the law removes the requirement for agencies to design the most energy- and water-efficient data centers, even as these facilities could consume at least 9 percent of US electricity by 2030 — pressure that can push up local power and water bills.

## Questions & Answers

### 1. What is FDCEA and when does it expire?
The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act sets rules for how US federal agencies build, secure and power their data centers; it is scheduled to sunset this fall.

### 2. Why does its expiry matter?
It removes guardrails on energy efficiency, water use and reporting, and ends requirements that agencies design efficient, secure data centers.

### 3. Is the government planning a replacement?
OMB has issued no plan; Senator Jacky Rosen, who sponsored the law, says her team is weighing options, but nothing concrete has been announced.

### 4. How much electricity could data centers use?
The Electric Power Research Institute estimates data centers could consume at least 9 percent of US electricity by 2030.

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