New $100 million FBI ‘Grey Wolf’ data center opens in eastern Idaho
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POCATELLO — It’s been two years in the making and Monday morning the new FBI data center and office building celebrated its $100 million renovations with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Pocatello.
The new data center, known as “Grey Wolf,” will optimize infrastructure, information and services by consolidating almost 100 data centers throughout DOJ. It will also expand the footprint of the FBI’s existing Pocatello facility, which is more than three decades old.
Watch the ribbon cutting here:
“It’s incredibly exciting for us to reach this milestone together with the opening of the data center,” FBI Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate said. “We’ve been looking forward to this ribbon-cutting ceremony since we broke ground back in Oct. 2017.”
The FBI has called Pocatello home since 1984. Adding to what was already in the city made sense, according to Abbate.
“We already had a solid base here with the facility and technological infrastructure so it was an ideal place to build upon,” Abbate said. “And we just love the community and the people here. It’s provided us a wealth of opportunities.”
The new additions now total about 140,000 square feet of space. Approximately 100,000 square feet make up the data center, while the remaining 40,000 square feet are responsible for the new office building. The structure will allow data to be securely collected, stored and analyzed.
Three hundred employees already work at the building but there is now room for about 250 more people. Most of the jobs involve information technology, but there are also finance and facilities positions, travel and voucher processing, intelligence apparatus, information management and records management.
“We believe this project is one of the foremost and finest examples of how the Department of Justice and the FBI are taking the resources that are appropriated to us — time, money, people, land — and figuring out how to use them most effectively and most efficiently for the taxpayer,” Abbate said.
Not only will FBI data be contained at this structure, but also information from the U.S. Marshal Service, the District Attorney, the Bureau of Prisons and the Treasury Department. It will be a major hub in the United States for law enforcement.
“This building, while in Pocatello, Idaho, will be the center and epicenter of what we are doing in Washington, D.C,” said Jeffrey Sallet, the FBI associate executive assistant director of finance and facilities.
There are two other data centers in Clarksburg, West Virginia and Sterling, Virginia.
