The U.S. government will start cleaning up its online house this summer by getting rid of half of its 2,000 websites, saving millions of dollars a year.

The Office of Management and Budget said the government would begin the yearlong process of shutting and consolidating websites so the nation's residents could find government information more easily.

"Having too many separate federal websites makes it harder for people to find the information they are looking for," OMB spokeswoman Moira Mack said in an email Wednesday. "By consolidating sites we need and eliminating those we don’t, we’ll make it easier for the public to access the information they need while cutting costs on the back end."

The 1,000 .gov websites to be eliminated are part of a larger effort by the OMB to cut waste in government.

Among the websites that appeared to have gotten the ax already is fiddlinforesters.gov, which was highlighted by President Obama in this YouTube video. Another casualty is expected to be deserttortoise.gov. Among those that might be consolidated are invasivespeciesinfo.gov and invasivespecies.gov.

The government halted the creation of new government websites for the next three months. Its initial cuts in the next few months are expected to eliminate 25% of its websites.

RELATED:

Facebook hires former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart

LulzSec says it hacked U.S. Senate website and Bethesda gaming servers

NASA readying ocean surveying satellite for launch from Vandenberg AFB

-- Salvador Rodriguez

twitter.com/sal19

Image: A screen shot of deserttortoise.gov, a website that may fall victim to the government's plan to shut down half of its websites. Credit: deserttortoise.gov