Maintenance, Security Issues Plague Federal Facilities

3/31/2025

The General Services Administration (GSA) continues its struggles with overseeing and potentially disposing of unused and underused federal facilities. In the meantime, the General Accounting Office (GAO) recently released a report that further raises the alarm on the maintenance, condition and overall management of federal facilities. 

The GAO report, “Federal Real Property: Congress and Agencies Have Acted to Address Key High-Risk Issues but Challenges Remain,” outlines the challenges the GSA faces because the federal government retained more real property than it needed, did not have reliable property data to support decision making, and struggled to secure federal buildings. the report also discusses key actions taken since 2023 and actions needed to address four issues: 

• Underused buildings. Federal agencies have long struggled with underused space, which costs millions of dollars. The Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies Act requires agencies to measure building utilization and plan to dispose of underused space. 
• Data reliability. The GSA has worked with federal agencies to improve its Federal Real Property Profile database but has not yet fully corrected property location data. The U.S. Department of Defense improved its real property data as well, but further efforts are needed. 
• Facility security. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has taken steps to improve facility security, but more progress is needed. Contract guards did not detect prohibited items being brought into federal facilities in about half of GAO's 27 covert tests in 2024. This is a rate comparable to the Federal Protective Service's (FPS) own covert testing results. 
• Building condition. This year GAO added building condition to the existing real property high-risk area. The federal government's annual maintenance and operating costs for its 277,000 buildings were about $10.3 billion in fiscal year 2023. Agencies also have deferred maintenance and repairs on many buildings, creating a backlog. GAO found that these needs had more than doubled, from $170 billion to $370 billion between fiscal year 2017 and 2024. 

Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.?