Most Federal Agencies Use Less Than 25 Percent of Office Space: GAO

The General Services Administration Headquarters building, where the Washington presidential transition offices for US President-elect Donald Trump are located, in Washington, D.C., on November 21, 2016. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Most federal agencies are using less than 25 percent of their headquarters space, according to a new U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

Testifying before members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on July 13, GAO Acting Director of Physical Infrastructure David Marroni said an assessment was conducted earlier this year to determine how much office space federal agencies really need.

“We assessed the extent to which 24 agencies utilized their headquarters buildings in January, February, and March of this year,” he said. “What we found was that all 24 of those headquarters buildings had extra space and that most agencies were using less than 25 percent of their headquarters capacity on average.”

While Mr. Marroni noted that office space use has declined amid the post-COVID-19 rise of remote and hybrid work, he added that, for most agencies, the problem predates the pandemic.

The GAO also identified outdated buildings as a roadblock to the consolidation and reconfiguration of a modern workforce.

“Many headquarters buildings were built decades ago, before technology enabled the agencies to do more with fewer workers,” Mr. Marroni said. “But the buildings remain the same size, so you end up with plenty of space. For example, we calculated that for one agency, even if all of its assigned staff came into its headquarters building on a single day, it would still only use two-thirds of the building’s capacity.”

According to the preliminary report (pdf), agencies cited several obstacles to correcting the problem, including funding, concerns about attendance policy changes, reluctance to share space with other agencies, and a lack of consistent standards for office use.

The assessment remains ongoing.

Keeping the Lights On

According to General Services Administration (GSA), the federal government owns roughly 511 million square feet of office space, which costs billions of dollars annually to maintain.

Among the agencies reviewed by the GAO, those on the higher end of the spectrum used about 39 to 49 percent of their headquarters’ capacity. Agencies in that category included the Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Most, however, fell below that mark. Agencies in the smallest office usage category—using an average of roughly 9 percent—included the Department of Agriculture, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Personnel Management, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, and the GSA.

But used or not, those agencies’ extra space is still being paid for by taxpayers—a fact emphasized by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the committee’s chairman.

“The taxpayer is quite literally paying to keep the lights on even when no one is home,” the congressman said. “And the lights are just the beginning of it, right? There’s security, there’s utilities, there’s upkeep when nobody’s there. And if this trend is any indication of space usage and lease space, we are wasting literally billions of dollars each year.”

Mr. Marroni added that there are also “opportunity costs” involved.

“Every dollar an agency spends on unneeded space is one dollar that can’t be used for other priorities,” he said.

Accountability

Mr. Perry also noted that the GSA, which is charged with the management, preservation, and leasing of government buildings, is among those agencies with the lowest percentage of office utilization.

During his line of questioning, he raised the subject with GSA Public Buildings Service Commissioner Nina Albert.

“You guys are kind of leading the charge—you know, you plant the flag,” he said. “It’s important that you set a standard. What are you guys doing about it?”

Ms. Albert replied that she thought her agency was a “fantastic example of what we’re doing right” that also illustrated the larger challenges to addressing the issue. She noted that the GSA used to have two headquarters and six leases, which they have since consolidated into one headquarters.

“Since 2012, we’ve reduced our own footprint by more than 40 percent,” she said, adding that the associated savings totaled more than $300 million.

While Mr. Perry said that was “awesome,” he stressed that the report indicates there is still “plenty of work to be done.”

In another, more heated exchange, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) grilled the commissioner on how many GSA employees currently work in the agency’s headquarters—a question she said she was unable to answer.

“That is completely unacceptable, ma’am,” he said. “You’ve had a long period of time to get that answer.”

The congressman noted that he had asked Ms. Albert the same question at a roundtable discussion in March and that she’d given him the same response then.

“Do you have any reasonable excuse for not being able to answer the most basic question of how many of your employees are physically located in a place where they can help American citizens?” he asked.

“We don’t attribute being able to do our jobs to whether we’re sitting in an office,“ she replied. ”Construction managers are not in an office; they’re out on a job site. So, there’s a mix on a daily basis.”

Not satisfied with that response, Mr. Van Orden stated that she was “failing” at her job, adding, “We should be able to fire you right now.”

His remarks, though more heated, echoed Mr. Perry’s assertion that agencies and their officials should be held accountable for how much space they were occupying and not using.

“If you’re in charge, you’ve got to take care of business,” the chairman said.

“And if you don’t want to, someone else is going to, and that someone’s going to be us.”