A House subcommittee has urged federal agencies to make the fullest use of the Federal Real Property Database, which recently was updated to reflect the government’s owned and leased properties through fiscal 2017.
“Releasing the FRPP publicly not only improves transparency and accountability but has the potential, if used correctly, to be an effective tool in facilitating the better management of federal real property. For example, such uses could include ensuring data is appropriately available as the Public Buildings Reform Board develops recommendations for sales, consolidations, and redevelopment and provides an opportunity for the private sector, state and local stakeholders, and others to access meaningful information on federal properties to effectively provide input and proposals for federal real estate,” said a memo on the program.
Agencies should identify how the data can be used, ensure the most useful data is collected, and “create mechanisms to receive actionable input and proposals,” said the memo, prepared for a recent session of the Transportation subcommittee overseeing public buildings.
It highlighted key points from the most recent release, including that it describes 17,000 office spaces or locations, 22,000 warehouses and storage facilities, 17,000 leased facilities or land, 16,500 parking structures, and 3,800 unutilized or underutilized properties.
It added that while several recent laws have improved the quality of the dataset, it still does not include some information that would be useful, including: the organization occupying the space; replacement value; repair needs; annual operating costs; estimated future capital expenditures; whether asset is excluded for national security reasons and reason; and whether number of federal employees and contractors can be determined, and if so what are those numbers.
