Federal Real Property: Progress Made Toward Addressing Problems, but Underlying Obstacles Continue to Hamper Reform

OMB has required agency-specific validation and verification plans, and according to OMB officials, has developed a Federal Real Property Profile validation protocol to certify agency data.

In 2007, GAO reported that the administration and real property-holding agencies made progress toward strategically managing federal real property and addressing long-standing problems. However, these problems persisted and underlying obstacles remained. More specifically, underlying obstacles, such as competing stakeholder interests, legal and budgetary limitations, and a need for improved capital planning, persisted. Federal agencies continued to face long-standing problems in the federal real property area, which included excess and underutilized property, deteriorating facilities and maintenance and repair backlogs, reliance on costly leasing, and unreliable real property data. Agencies also continued to face many challenges securing real property. Moreover, these problems were exacerbated by underlying obstacles that continued such as competing stakeholder interests, legal and budgetary limitations, and the need for improved capital planning. Therefore, GAO recommended that OMB develop an action plan to address the underlying obstacles that hamper real property management reform. In 2011, the administration proposed the Civilian Property Realignment Act (CPRA) to address the excess property problem and its legal and financial obstacles, as well as stakeholder influences in real property decision making. We believe that CPRA meets the intent of recommendation. It lays the groundwork for addressing other real property management issues and is focusing congressional debate on the full range of real property management challenges.

In 2007, we reported that federal real property continued to be a high-risk area due to excess and deteriorating property, reliance on costly leasing, unreliable data, and security challenges. Furthermore, agencies' efforts to improve long-term capital planning were not clearly linked with the real property management initiative that the administration had established at that time. We recommended that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) establish a clearer link or crosswalk between agencies' efforts under the administration's real property initiative and broader capital planning guidance that OMB provides to agencies. In response to our recommendation, OMB agreed that coordinating these efforts should be improved and said that greater emphasis on real property in its guidance would result in progressive improvement in this area of capital planning as agencies' efforts evolved. OMB recently identified a number of improvements since our report that demonstrate this progressive improvement and collectively address our recommendation. For example, a June 2010 Presidential Memorandum speaks to a broader management strategy for real property that goes beyond acquisition, disposal, and operations and maintenance, and includes integration with sustainability efforts and human resource initiatives such as telework. Furthermore, the Administration's recently proposed Civilian Property Realignment Board would give agencies an extra tool to resolve common obstacles and more efficiently manage real property capital investments. In advance of this proposal being enacted, OMB has established a Real Property Advisory Committee (RPAC), made up of OMB and select agency real property officials, which is meeting with agencies to go over their current inventories and trends. RPAC is also starting discussions with agencies about their current missions and human resource and technology advances in relation to real property needs. According to OMB, this will help to integrate real property management within the larger context of strategic planning within agencies. Finally, OMB has proposed additional data elements to be included in the Federal Real Property Profile which is a single database that includes all real property under the control of executive branch agencies that will provide further information, such as data on lease expirations, which will allow agencies to look retrospectively and prospectively at their inventories. As a result of these efforts, the government's real property management initiatives have become more clearly linked with agencies' long-term capital planning efforts and agencies are better positioned to address the problems that led to our designation of real property management as a high-risk area.