GAO said that over 2017-2021, more than 25,000 security recommendations were made at nearly 5,000 facilities on topics ranging from physical protections to remote monitoring. Image: Glynnis Jones/Shutterstock.com
Federal agencies put in place only a “small percentage” of recommendations to improve the physical security of their facilities, “raising questions about the extent to which those federal facilities and their occupants are protected,” the GAO has said.
“Federal facilities have been the subject of numerous GAO reports and are included on GAO’s list of high-risk areas in part due to security issues,” it said in a report following up on concerns raised in a House hearing last year about the level of response to recommendations made in security assessments by the Federal Protective Service.
The FPS, an arm of Homeland Security, conducts vulnerability assessments of a facility every three to five years, using standards set by the Interagency Security Committee that take into account factors such as the facilities’ location, existing countermeasures, and local crime statistics. Implementation, though, is left to the tenant agency or to the local facility security committee at sites with more than one agency.
GAO said that over 2017-2021, more than 25,000 security recommendations were made at nearly 5,000 facilities on topics ranging from physical protections to remote monitoring. Of those, though, there was no response to 57 percent, 12 percent were rejected, 19 percent were closed without being implemented and the rest had other outcomes, including only 6 percent considered “implemented.”
In all six discussion groups with representatives from 14 agencies across 27 facilities, GAO said, “participants mentioned that the expenses associated with purchasing and installing countermeasures recommended by FPS affected committee decisions” as a factor in the whether a recommendation was followed fully, partially or not at all. In some cases, it added, some of the tenant agencies would have been able to provide their share of the cost but the recommended improvement was not carried out because others could not.
Regarding why more than half of recommendations never get a formal response, GAO said that participants cited issues such as difficulties in coordinating a response among tenant agencies within timeframes set by the FPS; turnover of officials sitting on the facility security committees; and the competing priorities of those serving on them. Further, “committees may not respond because they are reluctant to attribute their names to a rejected recommendation and the associated risk.”
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