A 1 percent increase in reuse of excess property could save millions of dollars, said GAO. Image: Lucian Coman/Shutterstock.com
The GAO has added to its annual report on opportunities for potential savings two areas of long-running concern, management of federal real estate and of other property.
Those were among the additions to the latest version of a report on overlap, duplication and fragmentation among federal agencies that cites the potential cost savings from addressing those issues as well as in other areas.
“Federal agencies face longstanding challenges in disposing of unneeded properties. These challenges include lengthy disposal processes related to statutory and regulatory requirements and a lack of upfront funding needed to prepare properties for disposal. These challenges are, in part, why the management of federal real property has remained on GAO’s high-risk list since 2003,” it said.
It cited setbacks to a process intended to speed up such sales by creating an advisory board to recommend properties for sale much like the old DoD base closings commission. Only 10 of the 12 properties from the first round of recommendations have been sold, and a second proposed round was cut short for reasons including lack of proceeds from the first round that were needed to fund the up-front costs of the second round.
It recommended that GSA collect, share and apply the lessons learned to a planned round of sales next year, saying that “identifying even an additional 1 percent in potential sales could generate or save the federal government millions of dollars.”
The GAO also pointed to reports recommending increased efforts to make “personal property”—items such as computers, office equipment and furniture, scientific devices and industrial equipment—available to other agencies when such items are still usable but are declared to be excess. It said that even a 1 percent increase in the amount of such property transferred in that way would similarly result in savings in the millions of dollars compared with new purchases.
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