A lack of clarity on the number of employees who will be permitted and choose to telework in the wake of COVID-19 has delayed real property decisions. Image: Vera Petrunina/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe upsurge in telework resulting from the pandemic has only slightly reduced the amount of office space federal agencies us and while there are expectations for greater reductions moving forward, uncertainty over long-term telework practices makes those prospects murky, GAO has said.
While increased offsite work raised the prospect of potentially billions of dollars in real estate savings, in a survey of the 24 Cabinet departments and largest independent agencies, GAO found that the impact so far has been largely to continue “footprint” reduction efforts previously underway. Seventeen of those agencies did not terminate any leases or allow leases to expire in response to the pandemic through March of this year, and of those that did, only some 525,000 square feet out of a total portfolio of some 238 million was affected.
Reasons included that “officials were reluctant to make significant real property decisions, including revising plans that took years to develop and fund, until more is known about how federal employees will work in the future”; that space planning was a low priority compared with concerns about safety and carrying out the agency’s mission; that leases commonly have financial penalties for terminating them early; and the complexity of disposing of vacant federal office space.
Several in fact had to extend existing leases due to pandemic-related needs, the report said.
Sixteen of the agencies expect to reduce their number of leases in the next three years and 19 expect to reduce their square footage, it said, adding that about half of current leases are set to expire by 2026. However, “the lack of clarity on the number of employees who will be permitted and choose to telework in the wake of COVID-19 has delayed real property decisions” and five agencies GAO studied in detail said that “it is difficult to determine the extent to which employees will telework in the post-pandemic once federal executive branch agencies are no longer directed by OMB to maximize telework.”
GAO said that planning also is hampered because agencies collect only limited data on their use of space—and that while GSA collects data on its own, it does not widely share it among agencies. The GSA agreed with a recommendation to make that data more readily available.
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