Federal Manager's Daily Report

OMB has ordered each federal department and independent agency to designate or re-designate within one month a “senior real property officer” who is to “lead and direct the agency’s real property program and implement real property functions.”

OMB memo M-18-21, which also applies to government corporations other than the USPS, carries out certain provisions of two laws enacted in 2016 targeting the government’s long-standing problems in disposing of excess properties, the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act and the Federal Property Management Reform Act.

The officer must be “in a central leadership position at the agency, has responsibility for overall coordination of the agency’s real property program, and is positioned high enough within the agency to regularly engage agency senior leadership” and must “have the necessary skills and knowledge to lead and direct the agency’s real property program and implement real property functions provided in law, regulation, and administration policy,” it says.

The officer is to: have a central policy-making role for all policy that has real property implications; coordinate all real property program planning activities for the agency and its components; ensure department-wide planning requirements are implemented by all agency components; coordinate all real property program elements for the agency and it components, including real property planning, budget formulation and execution; ensure the accuracy, completeness, and continual improvement of the data the agency annually submits to the Federal Real Property Profile database; and represent the agency on the Federal Real Property Council.

“The FRPC’s focus will be to develop a long-term strategy to ensure mission capability is maintained and to right-size the government-wide portfolio to ensure cost effectiveness and efficiency,” OMB added. The council is to meet quarterly and technical working groups are to meet about monthly.