Title: From Office Supplies to Airplanes--What Happens to Federal Property When It's No Longer Needed? Description: Each year, federal agencies dispose of hundreds of millions of dollars in personal property that is no longer needed. This includes everything from office supplies to airplanes. What happens to these items when they are no longer needed? We'll learn more from GAO's Biza Repko. Related work: GAO-26-108521, Federal Personal Property: GSA Can Better Assess the Effectiveness of Its Disposal Efforts Released: September 2026 [ START ] { Music } [ Holly Hobbs: ] This is GAO's Watchdog Report. Your source for fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Holly Hobbs. Each year, federal agencies dispose of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of personal property. It's everything from office supplies to airplanes. What happens to these items when they're no longer needed? And why should you care? Here to tell us more about this issue, calling us from Michigan, is GAO's Biza Repko. Biza, thanks for joining us. [ Biza Repko: ] Thanks for having me. [ Holly Hobbs: ] So maybe we can start with why should we care about these items the government no longer needs? [ Biza Repko: ] Well, every year, federal agencies dispose of millions of items. They decide these items are either excess, or they don't need them anymore. And specifically, right now, because the federal government is changing its physical footprint, that is, they're closing offices or they're consolidating offices, the amount of this unneeded property is likely to increase, which makes it a great time to improve the effectiveness of the overall disposal process. Now, if you think about this property, some of it's in poor condition. It's obsolete. It's outgrown its useful life. But a lot of the items are almost new, or they're in good working order. And because the federal government invests taxpayer dollars when it originally acquires this property, it promotes reuse because that's an efficient use of those funds. [ Holly Hobbs: ] So what actually happens to these items when they're no longer needed? [ Biza Repko: ] Well, there's a couple steps in the process. The first is that unneeded property is offered to be transferred free of cost, other than shipping and transportation, to other federal agencies. If no federal agency picks up the item, then it's available to be donated to states. If no state takes it, it can be offered to be sold at auction to the public. If the unneeded property is not sold at the conclusion of the auction, it can be what's known as abandoned or destroyed, which includes something like going to a recycler. Ultimately, we found about 9% of all unneeded property were reused during our study time frame, which covered just over two years--from July 2023 to September 2025. [ Holly Hobbs: ] This kind of sounds like the government's yard sale. And I don't know whether 9% is good or bad. Do we know? [ Biza Repko: ] I don't think we know whether it's thumbs up or thumbs down like we talked about before some of these items are obsolete. They're past their useful life, but some of the items do have a purpose and can be reused. And so, I think we think about the 9% number as that's what the number is for what people need to pick up. [ Holly Hobbs: ] One of the things we did for this report is we visited a warehouse where GSA keeps all this stuff. What can you tell us about that visit? What did you see? [ Biza Repko: ] That was a warehouse that contained items from agencies around the Washington, D.C. area. And there was a lot of office furniture. (Chuckle) I think like rows and rows of chairs. There were desks and filing cabinets and tables. Beyond what we saw in that warehouse, more than 60% of unneeded property falls into two different categories. One is electric equipment components. That's things like monitors and keyboards. And another is a category called hardware and abrasives. That's things like screws and nuts and bolts and sandpaper. But there are all types of items that are disposed by federal agencies. There's things like food, clothing, tactical vehicles, emergency medical supplies. And if interested, the public can see the vast array of items available for auction at GSAauctions.gov. [ Holly Hobbs: ] So, do we know how much all this stuff is worth? [ Biza Repko: ] It's a little bit of a tricky question. So, for the time frame that we covered, which was just a little over two years, the federal agencies disposed of over more than 48 million unneeded items. And the original acquisition cost of these items, so what the agencies paid when they first got them, amounted to over $10 billion dollars. But this is an estimate that's reported by agencies so I would caveat it that way. But the best guess is over $10 billion dollars. [ Holly Hobbs: ] GSA coordinates the sale and disposal of all these items. What can you tell us about their efforts? [ Biza Repko: ] Well, GSA does three main things. The first thing they've done is establish an online platform for listing and acquiring unneeded property. It's essentially a federal version of Craigslist. It allows agencies to list their unneeded property. They can put a picture and a description, and then it allows other agencies and state governments, and the public to acquire that property. Second, they provide a host of educational resources. These are things like online guidance and on demand trainings. They're really intended to explain the disposal process overall, and how to use their platforms to list and acquire property. Third, they provide something called direct assistance to federal agencies. And what that means is that GSA has field representatives who will work with an agency to help them dispose of their unneeded property. They'll help with screening, and they're just trying to expedite the process. For example, for agencies that have unneeded property in the Washington, D.C. area, GSA offers to store and take full accountability of their property for a fee, and if they do that, then GSA handles all the details of the disposal process. [ Holly Hobbs: ] Did we find anything that GSA could do better? [ Biza Repko: ] Well, while we found that GSA has a lot of efforts in place, they could be doing a better job of assessing the effectiveness of those efforts. So, at a very high level, GSA's property disposal goals are to facilitate timely, efficient, and effective disposal. They're really doing that to try to provide the greatest return to taxpayers. They do have a scorecard with performance measures to track some of these goals. For instance, they track things like cycle time. How long does it take? But the scorecard doesn't contain measures related to their core efforts, such as tracking how effective their training is or how effective their direct assistance is. And so to address these issues, we made recommendations to GSA to develop performance measures related to those facilitation efforts, like training and direct assistance, and incorporate them into its scorecard. We also recommended that GSA collect data related to those measures to more fully assess its efforts. [ Holly Hobbs: ] Last question, what's the bottom line of our report? [ Biza Repko: ] The bottom line is that this is a really important time for GSA. The federal government is consolidating its footprint, it's closing offices, and the amount of unneeded property is likely to grow. So, this is a great moment for it to better measure how well its efforts are working. [ Holly Hobbs: ] Biza, thanks for your time. [ Biza Repko: ] Thank you. { Music } [ Holly Hobbs: ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. And make sure to leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.gov. [ END ]