The average rate in the lowest six - Agriculture, HUD, GSA, OPM, SBA and SSA—was just 9 percent while the average in the highest six - Commerce, DHS, Justice, State, Treasury and NRC—was 35 percent. Image: Mark Van Scyoc/Shutterstock.com
In a report that likely will be used to continue the pressure on agencies to cut back on their use of telework and to consolidate their working space in general, the GAO has found that as of early this year, 17 of 24 headquarters buildings for federal departments and large agencies were using less than 25 percent of their capacity on average.
Telework added to the long-standing under-use of federally owned and leased buildings, GAO said at a House hearing, an issue that has been on its high-risk list since 2003. For example, it said that at one headquarters building it examined, “if all assigned staff entered the building on a single day, it would still only use 67 percent of the building’s capacity based on its usable square feet.”
The report did not provide capacity usage rates by agencies, instead breaking them into four groups. The average rate in the lowest six – Agriculture, HUD, GSA, OPM, SBA and SSA—was just 9 percent while the average in the highest six – Commerce, DHS, Justice, State, Treasury and NRC—was 35 percent.
Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., head of the House subcommittee on public buildings, said the report should serve as a “baseline to understand the current challenges so we can pass legislation that will meaningfully help the government right-size its portfolio and either use or get rid of unused space.” House Republicans earlier this year passed a bill to require agencies to revert to pre-pandemic telework practices, a measure that has not advanced in the Senate. Similar language is attached to the House version of the general government spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year.
Since the GAO performed its work over January-March, OMB has told agencies to reassess their telework levels and several, including VA and Education, have announced plans to require more employees to work onsite and for more often.
The GAO meanwhile cautioned that its figures were not exact, since agencies differed in how they counted how many employees were onsite in a given day and also in how they measure building capacity.
It added that the expiration of more than half of leases for rented space over the next four years offers opportunities for consolidations. However, it said that would run up against considerations including the cost of reconfiguring space to accommodate more employees, questions about long-term policies on the mix of onsite and offsite work, and reluctance by officials to share space with other agencies or even with a different component of the same agency.
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