GAO has issued the latest in a long series of reports warning about security in federal buildings, once again raising concerns about problems with the characteristics and location of some buildings limiting security options; the difficulties of balancing security against the need for public access; lack of training and numbers of Federal Protective Service officers; conflicting interests and needs of the various tenants of some buildings; and lack of communication with the public regarding what items may not be brought into a building.
It said that both the FPS—responsible for security at some 8,900 buildings under GSA control–and the Marshals Service–which has jurisdiction over court buildings–have uncovered problems in the covert and intrusion tests they have conducted. The Marshals Service passed 83 percent of tests in 2010 and 91-92 percent the following three years. However, it has not met its intrusion-test frequency requirement per building each year, GAO said.
The report did not include test results at FPS due to the sensitivity of the information other than to say that the passage rates were “low.”
In addition, both agencies’ data on prohibited items contain inconsistencies that call their accuracy into questionWhile FPS reported it had detected approximately 700,000 prohibited items in 2013, nearly 300 buildings had no reported data on prohibited items over 10 years.
“While FPS and USMS may use the results of covert and intrusion tests to address problems at the individual building or FPS region or USMS district level, to some degree, they do not use the results to strategically assess performance nationwide. Without a more strategic approach to assessing performance, both FPS and USMS are not well positioned to improve security screening nationwide, identify trends and lessons learned, and address the aforementioned challenges related to screening in a complex security environment,” GAO said.
