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Federal Property: GSA Guidance Needed to Help Agencies Identify Unneeded Property in Warehouses

GAO-20-228 Published: Dec 20, 2019. Publicly Released: Jan 22, 2020.
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Fast Facts

3 federal agencies—the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the Bureau of Prisons—spent over $50 million in FY 2018 on warehouses, many of which contain property (like vehicles, furniture, and computers). However, these agencies do not systematically assess whether they still need all of their property.

Federal agencies are required to use General Services Administration guidance to assess the ongoing need for property. However, we found that GSA’s guidance doesn’t describe useful practices for such assessments.

We recommended that GSA include this information in its guidance.

Inmate Mattresses Stored at a Bureau of Prisons Warehouse

Mattresses wrapped in plastic and stacked on top of each other in a warehouse

Mattresses wrapped in plastic and stacked on top of each other in a warehouse

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Highlights

What GAO Found

GAO found that three selected agencies stored a wide variety of property in their warehouses. For example:

  • Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warehouses at four main sites contained items used to build and repair aviation support systems, such as wind shear alert systems. Other sites contained tools and equipment to maintain aviation support systems or housed the systems themselves.
  • The Department of Energy's Office of Science warehouses, located primarily at national laboratories, contained items, such as large magnets, for use in scientific experiments.
  • Bureau of Prisons (BOP) warehouses, located mainly at federal correctional institutions, contained items, such as food, uniforms, and soap, for inmates.

The above agencies reported spending approximately $50.1 million in fiscal year 2018 on warehouse rent, operations, and maintenance costs.

Examples of Property in Federal Warehouses

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The three selected agencies generally did not systematically assess the ongoing need for property in their warehouses and had limited guidance for doing so. For example, although two of the agencies had policies about when such an assessment should occur, none of the agencies specified how it should occur for most types of property. Instead, agencies primarily relied on agency officials' professional judgment to assess ongoing need. GAO identified instances where agencies retained unneeded property absent relevant guidance. For example, one agency site had stored obsolete computers dating back to the 1990s. While the General Services Administration (GSA) drafted guidance in response to recent legislation, this guidance does not describe approaches or practices stakeholders identified as potentially useful for assessing ongoing need for property, such as periodic retention justifications, use of data analytics, and utilization reviews. Further, while GSA officials intend to put the final guidance on GSA's website and provide it to agencies that participate in a GSA-chaired committee on property management by December 2019, GSA has not provided a documented plan or a timeline for broader dissemination. Guidance that incorporates such approaches could help agencies avoid retaining property that is no longer needed and, as a result, allow them to better manage their property and use of their warehouse space.

Why GAO Did This Study

Federal civilian agencies hold and manage billions of dollars in property that is not considered to be real property, such as vehicles, furniture, computers, and scientific instruments. Some of these items are stored in nearly 18,000 warehouses covering more than 90-million square feet. Agencies are required by law to regularly identify and dispose of unneeded items. However, GAO reported in 2018 that agencies often did not do so. The Federal Personal Property Management Act of 2018 requires agencies to use GSA guidance to assess the utilization and ongoing need for property.

GAO was asked to review property stored in warehouses. This report examines: (1) what is known about property in selected agencies' warehouses and how much agencies spend to store it, and (2) the extent to which selected agencies assess the ongoing need for property stored in warehouses. GAO reviewed federal statutes, regulations, and GSA's guidance; analyzed policies from three agencies—FAA, Office of Science, and BOP—which were selected based on total warehouse square footage, among other factors; conducted site visits to agencies' warehouses; and interviewed stakeholders such as agency officials and industry groups.

Recommendations

GAO recommends that GSA incorporate approaches agencies could use to assess the ongoing need for property in GSA's guidance—such as periodic justifications, use of data, and utilization reviews—and develop a plan for communicating the guidance government-wide. GSA concurred with GAO's recommendation.

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
GSA Office of the Administrator The Administrator of GSA should direct the Office of Government-wide Policy (1) to incorporate into its guidance approaches or practices that agencies could use to assess utilization of and the ongoing need for property—approaches such as recommendations for periodic justifications, data analytics, and utilization reviews—and (2) to develop a plan and timelines for communicating the guidance to agencies government-wide. (Recommendation 1)
Closed – Implemented
Federal civilian agencies hold and manage billions of dollars of property that is not considered real property, such as vehicles, furniture, computers, and scientific instruments. For our review, we selected three agencies-Office of Science within the Department of Energy, Bureau of Prisons, and the Federal Aviation Administration-based on total warehouse square footage, among other factors. In 2019, we reported that the three agencies did not systematically assess the ongoing need for property in their warehouses and had limited guidance for doing so. For example, although two of the three agencies had policies in place explaining the frequency in which property custodians should assess property for ongoing need, none of the agencies had a systematic way to identify property that may be unneeded. Instead, they primarily relied on professional judgment to determine the ongoing need for property in warehouses in the absence of guidance on how to determine whether property is still needed. While officials at all of the selected agencies said they believed property custodians were able to identify unneeded property in a timely manner using their professional judgement, we identified instances where agencies had retained unneeded property in storage. Some industry stakeholders and federal agencies that participated in the Interagency Committee on Property Management (ICPM)-a committee chaired by the General Services Administration (GSA) that consists of executive agency representatives interested in federal property-identified more systematic ways to identify unneeded property. For example, industry groups we interviewed advocated for increased use of data to assess utilization to inform decisions on whether to retain stored property, such as utilization reviews that systematically assess property utilization and continued need. The Federal Personal Property Management Act of 2018 requires agencies to regularly assess certain types of property under their control in accordance with guidance from GSA. GSA's Office of Government-wide Policy officials told us they were in the process of developing informal guidance on minimizing and identifying excess property to meet the requirement, but the draft guidance we reviewed did not provide specific approaches or practices agencies could use to assess property utilization. Moreover, GSA officials did not provide a documented plan or time frame for communicating the guidance beyond publishing it on GSA's website and disseminating it to ICPM members, an approach that can limit the reach and awareness of this information to agencies government-wide. Accordingly, we recommended that the Administrator of GSA should direct the Office of Government-wide Policy (1) to incorporate into its guidance approaches or practices that agencies could use to assess utilization of and the ongoing need for property-approaches such as recommendations for periodic justifications, data analytics, and utilization reviews-and (2) to develop a plan and timelines for communicating the guidance to agencies government-wide. In May 2022, we confirmed that GSA included in its property management website approaches or practices agencies could use to assess utilization of and the ongoing need for property, including periodic utilization reviews such as management walkthroughs, routine property custodian reviews, or utilization surveys. In April 2023, GSA officials told us they posted this information to its online property disposal and screening system, which all federal agencies can access. GSA also emailed this guidance, along with a link to GSA's website, to all agency national utilization officers- property officers within each federal agency who coordinate with GSA to provide user access to GSA's online property disposal and screening system. These actions can help agencies avoid retaining property that is no longer needed and, as a result, allow them to better manage the use of their warehouse space.

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Topics

Real propertyFederal propertyVoluntary consensus standardsNuclear wasteWarehouse facilitiesAviationFederal prisonsComputersProperty managementFurnitureEnergyNational laboratoriesCorrectional facilitiesInventorySurplus propertyOperations and maintenanceContractor performanceHousingExecutive agenciesMaintenance costsFederal agenciesPersonal propertyDefense inventoryAudit objectivesAsset managementLegislationOverhead costsProperty disposalAirportsSpare partsBest practicesNuclear materialsAgency evaluationsSocial mediaUniforms