Many federally owned GSA facilities have had persistent water penetration from leaking roofs and windows. Image: Hunter Bliss Images/Shutterstock.com
Addressing the backlog of deferred maintenance and repairs in federal buildings is among the most pressing among its recommendations to the GSA, the GAO has said.
The GAO’s report closely follows one by the inspector general’s office at GSA identifying safety and security hazards in those buildings as among the most significant management challenges facing the government’s landlord agency.
Federal real property management has been on GAO’s high-risk list since 2003; however, this is the first time that deferred maintenance and repairs has been on GAO’s separate “priority open recommendations” report for GSA.
“GSA reported having a $3.1 billion deferred maintenance and repair backlog in fiscal year 2022—an amount that had grown 126 percent since fiscal year 2017. However, GSA did not communicate in budget documents the amount of funding that would be used to address the backlog or time frames within which GSA would address it. Developing a plan to address the backlog and including it in budget materials or related documents could inform decision makers about how funding levels could affect GSA’s backlog and help them evaluate GSA’s budget requests,” it says.
It said that the most recent GSA budget proposal “provided some information on addressing its deferred maintenance and repair backlog, including through requests for obligational authority and maintenance funding. However, GSA’s request did not identify ways to address funding issues or present a longer-term plan for how GSA intends to address its backlog, including needed funding amounts and timeframes.”
In addition to the upkeep issue, the GAO cited building-related issues including collecting and sharing information on utilization of space in those buildings and lessons learned from efforts to dispose of excess properties.
Longstanding Issues
GSA told a House hearing in 2022 that much of the federally owned property under its control was “suffering from the consequences of significant deferred maintenance, driven by inadequate investment” that puts federal employees and visitors to those buildings at risk.
“For example, many federally owned GSA facilities have had persistent water penetration from leaking roofs and windows” that became major liabilites, while “Other facilities, including many U.S. courthouses, have outdated fire, life-safety and elevator systems, which prevents or impedes the safe and reliable movement of judges, jurors, families, and visitors,” Public Buildings Service commissioner Nina Albert said at the time.
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