Despite being designated as critical infrastructure, many of the nation’s public water and wastewater facilities are considered antiquated and outdated due to resource constraints, even as they adopt digital infrastructure like sensors and network-connected systems. This gap leaves systems vulnerable to attacks, with inadequate incident response coordination and information sharing increasing the risks. 

To bolster cybersecurity, agencies and critical infrastructure organizations must prioritize adopting a comprehensive approach to modernization and protection. This includes implementing zero trust measures to mitigate risks, enhancing incident response processes to improve resilience and recovery capabilities, and sharing resources efficiently. As you’ll see, implementing zero trust does not have to be difficult.  

Laying the security groundwork 

Like other critical infrastructure sectors, the water sector relies heavily on operational technology (OT) systems and is often integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Many of these OT systems are legacy technologies that are not up to current cybersecurity standards, making this IoT/OT landscape incredibly ripe for “cyber-physical” incidents.  

In fact, escalating threats to critical infrastructure, including the targeting and compromising of OT systems and industrial control systems (ICS) in the water sector, have resulted in the federal government  sounding the alarm over malicious cyber actors who now pose physical threats against “insecure and misconfigured OT environments.”   

Securing OT/IoT systems is paramount, and zero trust frameworks offer a layered defense strategy. This approach ensures the security of critical systems while enabling efficient data exchange with internet-connected IT systems. Enhanced visibility and traffic monitoring further safeguard against potential threats, including command-and-control attacks.  

Enter zero trust 

Adopting zero trust architectures is a crucial step in hardening remote access to ICS devices that rely on a mix of IT and OT assets. In the absence of zero trust, systems can become key attack vectors and another entry point for malicious actors. 

Zero trust operates under the principle of “never trust, always verify,” and is inherently designed to reduce a network’s attack surface, prevent lateral movement of threats, and lower the risk of a data breach. A zero trust security model leverages least-privileged access controls, granular micro-segmentation, and multifactor authentication (MFA) to provide continuous verification of identities and devices, regardless of location, type or network connection. 

By implementing a zero trust approach, critical infrastructure operators and agencies will have more effective OT security, with adaptive, context-based application access that doesn’t depend on network access and users only having access to the applications and systems necessary for their job.  

Crucially, the correct zero trust solution must not require refactoring applications or OT controllers that cannot be modified. A good litmus test for zero trust is one in which the solution can use the network but does not depend on it for security. 

Finding the right tools 

Concurrently, critical infrastructure organizations and agencies must enhance their incident response capabilities. Resources like CISA’s Cyber Incident Response Guide for the Water and Wastewater Sector provide a framework for effective incident management, covering preparation, detection, containment, eradication, recovery and post-incident activities. Standardized tools and collaboration platforms facilitate information sharing and coordination among utilities and supporting organizations. 

Collaboration at all levels, including federal, state and local, and between critical infrastructure operators, government and industry is crucial for maximizing resources and enhancing cybersecurity across these vital sectors. By pooling resources and expertise, technology and cyber leaders can make meaningful strides in safeguarding information and OT systems in water and wastewater facilities. 

Taking a sector-wide approach 

By embracing modern cybersecurity solutions and leveraging available resources, the water and wastewater sector can lead by example in public sector cybersecurity, ensuring the resilience and security of critical infrastructure essential for safeguarding our communities and nation.  

Federal agencies must also serve as role models for secure and resilient systems by securing outdated technology while simultaneously modernizing security processes and supporting critical infrastructure operators with their digital modernization efforts. Again, securing outdated technology requires using zero trust solutions that do not force refactoring of applications or controllers nor depending on the network to provide that security. Otherwise, critical infrastructure sectors will remain easy targets, and the prospect of devastating disruptions to essential services will grow. 

Adopting zero trust is a journey. While OT presents challenges to implementing zero trust and modern security, federal leadership in support of greater collaboration, standardization and accountability is an effective way to secure critical infrastructure sectors from malicious threat actors. 

Hansang Bae is public sector chief technology officer at Zscaler. 

The post Safeguarding critical infrastructure: Addressing threats to the water sector first appeared on Federal News Network.

An independent board created by Congress finds agencies are sitting on more real estate than they need, and could recover billions of dollars by selling off excess space.

Members of the Public Buildings Reform Board say agencies have a unique opportunity to offload some of their excess space, if hybrid work is here to stay for federal employees.

“The board views this current reality as an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the government to right-size its portfolio,” Paul Walden, the board’s executive director, said at a PBRB meeting last Thursday.

But time is running out. The board, under the FASTA legislation, is scheduled to disband by May 2025.

“The clock is ticking against us,” Walden said.

Lawmakers are looking to extend the board’s tenure through the end of 2026 and give it additional authority. But none of those bills are close to passing.

Dan Mathews, former commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service and the PBRB’s newest member, said the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact means federal buildings are even more underutilized than when the board first started its work.

“Congress got frustrated that they saw a need for disposals, yet nothing was going through the process — or almost nothing — in respect to the need. And that problem is, in a way, worse now, because there’s so much more need,” Mathews said.

GSA has sold 10 of a dozen properties on PBRB’s list of high-value recommendations, and expects to sell another property by the end of July.

Former Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), another member of the PBRB, said the board has had some “tremendous successes,” but still has a lot of work ahead of it.

“Today, it appears that much of the status quo has not changed,” Rahall said. “We have problems getting information, we have problems with a lot of the agencies and trying to convince them to really relocate or consolidate. But we’re going to do it — we’re going to get our work done.”

Board members see plenty of opportunities to sell underutilized office space in major cities across the country.

PBRB is looking at 27 high-value federal properties in cities with a strong federal presence. Those include D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles.

The board finds most of this 11 million square feet of federal office space is underutilized, and that agencies could save billions of dollars in the long term by eliminating about 60% of this space.

If agencies got rid of nearly 7 million square feet of excess office space in these major metro areas, board expects that could save more than $3 billion over the next 30 years.

Walden says those savings include the sale of excess properties, as well as eliminating operating costs and maintenance of older, non-historic properties.

“We have all these buildings that are vastly underutilized, and the operating expenses are extraordinary, if you look at it on a per-person cost,” he said. “If you did some disposals and some consolidations, the savings are astronomical.”

Walden said the board’s analysis of these 27 federal properties isn’t part of any of its final recommendations and is currently a “hypothetical scenario.”

He also said the board isn’t looking at relocating federal employees out of the cities where they’re already working.

PBRB member David Winstead, another former PBS commissioner, said part of the problem is the federal portfolio is larger than what GSA can pay to keep in good working order.

That leads to office conditions that federal employees don’t want to work in.

“It’s a huge cost to the taxpayer to maintain these buildings that are no longer competent to be competitive, nice workspaces for federal employees. Many of the major historic ones we need to keep, and I think the board’s committed to that,” Winstead said.

GSA-owned buildings are, on average, over 50 years old, and showing their age. The agency is dealing with a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

Mathews says this problem is particularly apparent in downtown D.C.

“If we walked down Independence Avenue together, I’d point out over $4 billion worth of liabilities in the owned buildings before we get to the end of the street,” Mathews said. “That’s just in one street in one city.”

Another problem is that federal agencies don’t always want to relocate.

“We’re hearing from federal agencies that don’t want to move,” Winstead said. “GSA is still getting resistance from those agencies. Whether their names are on the building or not, it is not defensible for them to take a position like that now.”

Former Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Mass.), another PBRB member, said the board understands it’s not always easy to convince agencies to move.

“There is a debate right now as to whether GSA has the legal authority to require agencies to move. Some people say they do, GSA says it doesn’t,” Capuano said. “That’s one thing we should clarify whether they do or they don’t.”

The board is scheduled to submit its final round of recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget in December.

Walden says the board’s work has generated “quite a lot of interest” from lawmakers. PBRB members have briefed House and Senate committee members about a dozen times since this spring.

Walden says the board also recently convened a roundtable with commercial real estate to discuss the next steps.

“What do you think needs to happen going forward to effect change? Do you need to stand up a new commission? Do you need to give PBRB more authority, GSA more authority, OMB more authority? What needs to happen? What can we tell Congress to affect this transformation going forward?” he said.

Lawmakers are pressing agencies on underutilized space.

That’s because the Government Accountability Office found last summer that all agency headquarters buildings in the Washington, D.C. area had excess space, including 17 that had an average building utilization of just 25%.

PBRB went one step further. It estimates federal headquarters buildings operated at 12% of their estimated capacity, on average, between January and September 2023.

Mathews says agencies can’t justify having that much space, and not putting it to good use.

“What’s happening now is a completely indefensible amount of money is being spent on quantity of real estate, and quality is absolutely horrible,” Mathews said. “I don’t blame our federal employees who never want to come back into the office.

“It’s just the same thing over and over and over again. They’re empty, they have capital liabilities that are so far beyond the available resources,” he added. “There is no economic path forward for those buildings, period, bar none. So why aren’t we seeing more properties through the normal disposal process?”

Since 2020, GSA has shed about 8 million square feet of office space. It now oversees about 371 million square feet of federal real estate.

Elliot Doomes, the current commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, recently told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that GSA can deliver on their demands to sell or dispose of underutilized federal buildings.

That’s as long as Congress approves funds meant to relocate federal employees to new office space.

“We’re going to have to spend some money in order to save some money,” he said.

GSA is asking Congress for a $425 million “optimization” fund in next year’s budget. The funding would help agencies move out of underutilized office space.

Doomes said this funding proposal would help GSA improve building utilization.

“Although it’s agency by agency, I’ll tell you, the trend is agencies are giving up space. They understand,” Doomes told lawmakers. “We’re bringing our workspace experts to work with these agencies to say, ‘How often are people there? What kind of work do you do? Maybe you don’t need all that space.’ Let’s give some of that space back,” Doomes said.

The post Federal buildings board: Agencies can save billions by shedding ‘vastly underutilized’ office space first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Homeland Security last year completed a big project in Manhattan — Manhattan, Kansas, that is. Construction finished, the Science and Technology directorate cut the ribbon to the National Bio and Agro-Defense (NBAD) Facility there. And it came in under budget, which has produced a sort of financial echo. For a review of what it is and why its important, National Bio and Agro Defense Facility Program Manager Tim Barr joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Transcript interview:

Tom Temin
We’ll get into why you’re the former in just a moment. But first, I think the latest development in this project is that a bunch of money came back from the federal government to the state of Kansas over this. Tell us what that’s all about.

Tim Barr
So when the program was started, way back in 2006 — it’s been going on a long time — when we put out an RFI for different sites to do it. One of the things was if different entities who want to have this in their location, you can provide funding, you can provide land, whatever, there’s no restrictions on that. It wasn’t a requirement. But you could do it. So long story short, the state of Kansas gave us the 48 acre site. But they also gave us in total $307 million to go towards the construction of the $1.25 billion facility, with the stipulation that any funds remaining at the end of the project would be returned. Well, as things turned out, we had money leftover. So think it’s been a couple of weeks, now we wired the state of Kansas’ treasurer $10,082,355.80 That’s how much we are under budget on a $1.25 billion project. That’s the short story, Tom.

Tom Temin
Wow, I would have thrown in maybe a couple of dimes to round up that 80 cents to an even number. But we referred to you a moment ago as the former National Bio and Agro Defense Facility manager. It’s no longer Homeland Security?

Tim Barr
The U.S. Department of Agriculture owns and operates the facility. So this facility replaces the existing research facility at Plum Island, which is on an island between New York, Long Island and Connecticut. And the mission there will be the same mission at NBAD. Although slightly expanded, to do comprehensive research, develop vaccines, antivirals, and diagnostics and training capabilities to protect the country from foreign animal and emerging diseases that could impact our food supply and the ag economy. The difference with NBAD is in addition to the capabilities that currently exist at Plum Island, NBAD will have a BSL4 capability, which is the only facility in the United States that has BSL4 capability for large animals.

Tom Temin
BSL4 means…?

Tim Barr
So BSL2 is like a college chemistry lab, I’ll say. BSL3 is you’re working on pathogens for which there’s no impact on humans or there are known and standard treatments for humans dealing with them. BSL4, you’re working on things for which there is no treatment. And basically the work is you’re working in a moon suit with an air supply, things like Hendra virus, Ebola, things like that.

Tom Temin
And this is located in Manhattan, Kansas; is it associated with the land grant university there?

Tim Barr
It is adjacent to, it is not part of the university. But originally, DHS initiated the program. There’s USDA employees at Plum Island. In fact, the bulk of the employees there are USDA employees, they do the bulk of the research. And so when we were programming to get NBAD going, clearly we got a lot of input from USDA on their needs and all that, but DHS was going to be the owner-operator as they are with the Plum Island facility. The President’s budget in 2019 proposed, ‘let’s switch this over to have it USDA operated;’ that got enacted when the budget was put in place. And so we had to collaborate even more closely with USDA to change the management posture on all that. But in that, the legislation also stipulated that DHS would complete the — ongoing, at that time — construction and commissioning of the facility. So, now that that’s done, that’s why I’m now the former program manager for the NBAD program for Homeland Security.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Tim Barr, that former program manager. What are you program manager of now by the way?

Tim Barr
I’m not a program manager. I’m currently functioning as an advisor within the Office of National Labs, Science and Technology Directorate, supporting various program initiatives.

Tom Temin 
And let’s get back to Plum Island now. You say that still is DHS, but that is slated to close?

Tim Barr
Yes. As you mentioned earlier, we had the ribbon cutting which was sponsored by USDA and they did a great job, had a lot of nice dignitaries there, it was a great event. Very fulfilling at the end of a long, long period of execution. So right now they’re in the process of executing their plan to move all the pathogens from Plum Island to NBAD, which, I don’t know the details on that, I’m not involved in that anymore. But that’s ongoing right now. Once they get all those there, then they can start to take over the capabilities that are currently ongoing at Plum Island. Once that’s done, then the research facilities at Plum Island will be decommissioned and the property dispositioned, which is a changing avenue.

Tom Temin
Sure. Well, let’s hope they don’t spill anything along the way, taking it from Plum Island to Kansas.

Tim Barr
There are tried and true methods for moving materials such as that.

Tom Temin
And what’s required to decommission a place that was full of, frankly, poisons and unknown pathogens or untreatable pathogens for so many decades. That really goes back, I think, to World War II.

Tim Barr
The decommissioning of Plum Island is something I’m not completely familiar with. There’s another program area within the organization that’s dealing with that. But one point is that the untreatable pathogens you mentioned, that you have in a BSL4, they are not on Plum Island. Plum Island does not have the BSL4 capability. Their highest level is the BSL3.

Tom Temin
Right. So they could decommission that with some reasonable assurance that they could put up condos.

Tim Barr
Yeah, that plan’s in place. I am just not intimately familiar with it in order to speak to the various details.

Tom Temin
All right, and maybe just review for us, in some more detail, what does go on now that will happen in the new place in Manhattan? Is it mostly federally staffed? Or do academic researchers come in? Or how does that work?

Tim Barr
USDA uses basically a government-owned, government-operated approach with all federal employees. They do have some contractor support in certain areas. But they do partner. So all the research is basically done by those federal employees. And they do — as does DHS — reach out to various partners around the country and around the world in some ways, just for collaborations. But of the, I think the facility will employ something like 400 people, the bulk of those being federal employees, and they’re the ones that do the research there. And there’s research, and then there’s also the diagnostic mission, that’s a big part of the NBAD mission. And training: You bring in veterinarians from around the country, from around the world. And you show them ‘here’s what this disease looks like in these various animals,’ which is very valuable, because now these veterinarians are out in the field. And they can understand, ‘Okay, I’ve seen this before. I was trained on this,’ and so on. So that’s a big part of the mission as well.

Tom Temin
All right, sounds like a new twist on dog and pony show the way those veterinarians go out there. And Science and Technology Directorate, I think of that as the applied science wing, if you will, for Homeland Security, and its various missions. With the expelling of the new facility, the NBAD to Agriculture, what will Science and Technology at DHS continued to do in the bio defense area, which is still a legitimate concern for Homeland Security?

Tim Barr
So Science and Technology will still have a role in the Ag defense bio world. We’re still discussing with USDA how our partnership’s exactly going to work when that facility’s up and running. But we have other avenues to meet our mission needs at other facilities around the country. Not like NBAD, per se. But I would also point out that the Ag defense mission in Science and Technology is not the bulk of the work that Science and Technology does. There are many, many, many other areas of of research beyond the animal health and Ag defense mission functions that Science and Technology works on.

Tom Temin
Homeland Security operates in pretty much every area of infrastructure, fair to say. All right. So what will you do next year — you’ve been sort of kicked out to advisory role but sounds like you’ve been there a long time?

Tim Barr
Yes. Well, so I reside in Manhattan, Kansas. I’m now a remote employee in Manhattan, Kansas supporting the headquarters organization. And I’m enjoying that; it’s nice to do something new. I moved here to Manhattan in January of 2011. Back when the site was basically a pile of dirt. So while it’s very, very fulfilling to have completed that facility successfully, gotten it commissioned. And on top of that, as a native Kansan, being able to send money back to the state of Kansas. I’m enjoying the new role of diving into some different things for a change.

Tom Temin
And for those that have not had the pleasure of visiting Manhattan, Kansas, which the Northeast Corridor train does not go to, what are some of the virtues of Manhattan, Kansas?

Tim Barr
Well, so it’s a town of about 50,000. University Town, Kansas State University is located here, which is also where I went to school. And it’s a nice little Midwestern town with a nice share of brew pubs and nice restaurants and different things to do. And it’s not too far from Kansas City. It’s not a drive in traffic to Kansas City. It’s a straight hour and a half, two hour, get in your car and go and you’re there.

Tom Temin
Except no locality pay probably.

Tim Barr
No.

Tom Temin
Well, if there’s a brew pub locality pay won’t be far behind.

The post Homeland Security returns money to a state hosting a spiffy new lab first appeared on Federal News Network.

“We’re going to have to spend some money in order to save some money,” Elliot Doomes, commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s transportation and infrastructure subcommittee on Tuesday.

GSA is asking Congress for a $425 million “optimization” fund in next year’s budget. The funding would help agencies move out of underutilized office space.

Doomes said this funding proposal “would enable GSA to continue improving building utilization rates and provide better services to federal agencies and the community they serve.”

“Although it’s agency by agency, I’ll tell you, the trend is agencies are giving up space. They understand,” Doomes told lawmakers. “We’re bringing our workspace experts to work with these agencies to say, ‘How often are people there? What kind of work do you do? Maybe you don’t need all that space.’ Let’s give some of that space back,” Doomes said.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan told Congress last November that the agency is seeing a “huge opportunity” to cut federal office space by as much as 30% in the coming years.

While the Biden administration is calling on federal employees to return to the office more often, most agencies are still allowing many employees to work from home for a least a few days each two-week pay period. That hybrid work schedule is reducing agencies’ needs for office space.

GSA recently launched a Workplace Innovation Lab that lets teams for other federal test out alternative workplace designs. It’s also freed up space in its own downtown D.C. headquarters building to serve as a co-working space for federal agencies who work at other agencies.

“We keep offering these tools to agencies, and a lot of agencies, once they see the opportunity to shrink their footprint, they look at this as operational savings,” Doomes said. “We’re trying out these new things to tell agencies you can shrink your office space.”

In addition, about 50% of all GSA leases are expiring in the next five years, which gives the agency additional opportunities to consolidate.

Doomes said GSA has overseen about 89 projects where agencies consolidated office space over the past eight years. But agencies have also missed about 120 opportunities to consolidate office space because of a lack of funding.

When agencies relocate offices, they pay for furniture, fixtures, equipment and moving costs out of their budgets.

“They have their own separate appropriation process to request those funds. And if an agency doesn’t have that those funds, we can’t move them out and help them consolidate,” Doomes said.

GSA’s $425 million optimization fund, he added, would make it easier for agencies to consolidate office space, even if they can’t afford the move on their own.

“For the first time ever, we’re proposing that we’re going to ask for the money,” Doomes said. “And then we’ll be able to go to the agencies and say, ‘You can amortize the cost that it’s going to take to move and get new furniture. We’re going to move you out of this space, and we’re going to move you into additional spaces.’”

The Government Accountability Office found last summer that all agency headquarters buildings in the Washington, D.C. area had excess space, including 17 that had an average building utilization of just 25%. Doomes told lawmakers thinks the GAO report’s results are “concerning.”

Management of the federal government’s real estate portfolio has been on the Government Accountability Office’s list of high-risk programs since 2003. GAO has found GSA and its tenant agencies don’t have effective mechanisms to determine how much office space they need to meet their missions.

“Better managing this portfolio can mean real savings for federal agencies and ultimately, for the taxpayers. This is a serious challenge. But I think we can also look at it as a huge opportunity for GSA,” Subcommittee Chairman Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said.

GSA shed about 8 million square feet of office space since 2020. It now oversees about 371 million square feet of space.

“It’s progress, but we can do more,” Doomes said. “And that’s why these legislative proposals are so important. “We’re going to have to spend some money in order to save some money.”

GSA stepped up efforts to get rid of unneeded real estate last November, when it added 23 federal buildings to its sale and disposal process.

Among the properties, GSA is looking to repurpose the Department of Homeland Security’s former headquarters. GSA expects the properties to amount to a potential reduction of 3.5 million square feet from the federal government’s real estate portfolio, and a $1 billion cost avoidance over 10 years.

“We want to get people out of that space and move them into existing space,” Doomes said. “Sometimes we’re moving them into [GSA] owned space, because oftentimes, that’s the most cost-effective. And then there are some opportunities where we’re saying, ‘The lease rates are so low, we want you to move out of this space and move you into a much smaller space.”

GSA is also asking Congress to get full access to the Federal Buildings Fund, where it keeps rent payments from tenant agencies. Lawmakers have diverted about $1 billion from the fund annually for more than a decade to cover other costs.

Doomes said Congress, since 2011, has skimmed more than $10 billion from the Federal Building Fund.

“As a result, necessary repairs have been unfunded and have had to be resubmitted again,” Doomes said, adding that 13 of 17 major repair and alteration projects in GSA’s budget this year were resubmitted from previous years’ budget requests — but didn’t receive funding from lawmakers.

Doomes said delays in carrying out these projects have driven up the total cost by about $300 million, and prevented agencies from moving forward with consolidation efforts.

Doomes said full access to the Federal Buildings Fund in next year’s budget would allow GSA to “address necessary capital improvements like these in a timely manner, resulting in increased taxpayer savings and safer building conditions.”

He said it would also accelerate GSA’s efforts to sale and dispose of underutilized federal buildings that agencies no longer need.

The Public Buildings Service maintains office space for more than 100 federal agencies and more than 1 million federal agencies.

“Managing this portfolio requires GSA to be dynamic and flexible, including being prepared to repurpose or dispose of properties which have outlived their purpose. This is an increasingly difficult task,” Kelly said.

GSA is the in the middle of plans to move most occupants of the Capt. John F. Williams Coast Guard Building into the nearby John F. Kenney Federal Building in Boston.

Doomes said the $20 million consolidation project would avoid $30 million in repair liabilities and would save $1 million in annual operation and maintenance costs.

Lawmakers are pressuring federal agencies to make better use of underutilized office space, often by demanding that employees return to the office more often. A top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee added language to one of the fiscal 2025 spending bills that would set new requirements for agencies to publicly report their policies on federal telework and office space.

Congress passed the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA) in 2016, which created an independent board meant to recommend high-value, but underutilized federal properties GSA should sell or get rid of.

The Public Buildings Reform Board has completed its two rounds of recommendations. But so far, GSA has only sold 10 of the properties flagged by the board.

“We have an overall ineffective way to dispose of ineffective buildings,” Subcommittee Ranking Member Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said.

The PBRB is currently set to disband in May 2025. But the FASTA Reform Act, introduced by Cramer, would extend the termination date of the PBRB to Dec. 31, 2026, and would give the board additional authority.

“This process has shown a lot of promise, but it needs reform,” Kelly said. “Both sides of the aisle are looking for solutions to help us advance these efforts.

Doomes said GSA is in the process of selling one of the PBRB’s recommendations — a property in Laguna Nigel, California. Doomes said GSA received a $125 million bid for the property.

“We’re excited about that, and selling that property and others,” he said.

The post GSA says more funds needed to offload unneeded federal office space first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Office for Bombing Prevention in the Homeland Security Department is like an insurance company for federal buildings.

The likelihood of an explosive incident is rather small, but if there is a threat, it’s good to have the training and expertise.

OBP, which resides in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, helps prepare the Federal Protective Service and other law enforcement agencies for these and other threats.

“OBP training has really been a force multiplier with its empowered trainer program to build some capabilities with the Federal Protective Service. For protecting federal buildings, the Federal Protective Service is a primary piece of that, along with the US Marshal Service with court facilities,” said Jeffrey Dade, the technology integration section chief for the Office for Bombing Prevention, in an interview with Federal News Network. “One partner is with the Federal Protective Service National Academy at the all the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. We trained the Federal Protective Service employees and contractors in some select courses. An example is the vehicle borne improvised explosive device detection course. You have all these different vehicles going in out of federal buildings, OBP has a course that trains people how to do that screening of that detection, which clearly enhances security at federal buildings nationwide.”

FBI says incidents remain rare

Another course focused on bombing prevention products more generally, which is aimed at both the public and private sectors.

Dade said those and other courses are on top of the posters and job aids, such as bomb threat management planning templates to help organizations develop a bomb threat management plan as well as bomb threat guides, checklists and other information to help security offices.

“We have one, for instance, that categorizes explosive threats by size, anything down from a small pipe bomb up to a car bomb, and it gives you the distances that you would want to evacuate if you had an item of primary concern,” he said.

Dade, who joined OBP in September 2023 and spent more than 30 years as a state law enforcement officer in New Hampshire, where the bulk of his career was with the New Hampshire state police as a bomb technician, said explosive incidents around the country don’t happen very often.

In the last quarter of 2023, the FBI reported 209 “explosion incidents.”

Dade said of those 209, the FBI characterized 93 as intentional bombings, and of those 93, 29 were actual improvised explosive devices, with the remaining being other types of devices, such as chemical reaction bombs and homemade military explosives.

“As infrequent as they may seem, clearly they’re happening, and that was just in three months, 209 incidents. Thankfully, most bombings are criminal in nature, not based upon terroristic motivations,” he said. “The biggest challenge is keeping people from becoming complacent because the threat persists. It really hasn’t changed. The data says that. But because it’s not on the forefront, the concern is that we’re starting to lose our vigilance.”

OBP’s data, tools help inform FPS

OBP’s goal is to ensure public and private sector organizations remain vigilant.

One way the office is doing that is through data and analysis and improved modeling software. Dade said OBP provides explosive blast modeling tools.

“Using software, it will provide a 3D physics-based model that upon not just what the explosive threat could be, but also the engineering of the structure itself, to model what the consequences of different explosive related attacks might be. That model would inform protective measures you can take to mitigate the consequences of an attack,” he said. “A model might recommend the closing of a road or the installation of bollards that would keep a vehicle from getting so close to a building, thus mitigating the consequences to both not just the structure, but the people inside and outside. That’s a great example of how those protective measures get developed, and then how they get implemented.”

Another example of how OBP keeps federal agencies and other vigilant is through information sharing. Dade said the Technical Resource for Incident Prevention (TRIPwire) Portal both takes in and shares improvised explosive device information.

“It’s used by law enforcement officers and security personnel at all levels of government to include the federal government. It combines expert analysis and reports of with awareness, information, images and videos,” he said. “The big thing is a federal agency user could submit a request for information to the threat analysis team on any information dealing with domestic bombing incidents, trends, or emerging tactics so that they can stay informed and also that will inform protective measures they might implement in the future.”

OBP’s cross-agency collaboration

Another project underway is a new platform for OBP experts to analyze the data that’s outside of the agency, both open source information that the TRIPwire team captures, but also the data that the United States bomb data center captures.

Dade said the program also is helping OBP measure its impact on public and private sector organizations.

“What OBP is doing internally to really measure what is the success rate of our programs? Where are the gaps? What can we do to stay ahead of that to make sure that we’re being successful in our mission? It’s just a good example of connecting the dots as to what’s going on outside to both how OBP programs are performing on the inside so that we’re ensuring success and thereby raising the bar around bombing prevention preparedness,” he said.

That data is key ensuring OBP’s programs are meeting the needs of law enforcement agencies.

Dade said OBP helps lead the Joint Program Office for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices, which also the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Department of Defense and several others.

“There’s a lot of initiatives that go on on the Department of Defense side that can be adopted to work, not just in the federal government, but the country as a whole. There’s strong collaboration there,” he said. “Within DHS, we’ve got a lot of initiatives right now with the United States Secret Service. A good example is OBP developed a course to help fill a gap where the United States Secret Service partners a lot with the Department of Defense to do sweeps, ahead of national special security events, protecting high-level dignitaries. OBP, working with the Secret Service, and the Department of Defense developed the course to help not just for lack of a better word, streamline the delivery, but also to standardize the way that those sweeps get done by the military personnel in support of the Secret Service. That’s a huge example of collaboration on that from within the federal government.”

The post Vigilance is job one of the Office for Bombing Prevention first appeared on Federal News Network.

The 2025 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, which the GOP-led subcommittee advanced this week, includes language specifically targeting teleworking federal employees.

Report language accompanying the bill, which staff members for Subcommittee Chairman Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) shared with Federal News Network, would set new requirements for agencies to publicly report their policies on federal telework and office space.

“Federal employees are consistently abusing work-from-home policies within their respective agencies,” Aderholt wrote in a statement to Federal News Network. “Federal agencies that provide direct service to the public must return to work to better serve the American people. Telework should be judged solely on a case-by-case basis, not blanket policies.”

If enacted, the bill would require agencies to publicly share their office space utilization rates in the D.C. area, as well as the methodology they used to calculate those rates. Agencies would have 90 days to get the information online — and would have to update the data quarterly.

Office space utilization has remained a major challenge for agencies for years. The Government Accountability Office has said agencies currently have a unique opportunity to right-size their office holdings, now in a hybrid work environment.

Still, the lawmakers said they remain concerned with what they said is a lack of federal employees reporting to work in-person.

“A lack of in-office presence is particularly problematic for agencies whose mission involves direct service to the public,” subcommittee leaders wrote in the bill’s report.

The subcommittee’s report language also zeroes in on requirements for the specific agencies the legislation covers, including the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Education Department. The lawmakers are eyeing a 60-day deadline for those agencies to report how many employees are receiving D.C. locality pay, but who have not worked in-person in a D.C. office more than one day per week in the past year.

“Excessive abuse of telework across the federal government must end,” the subcommittee wrote. “Approvals for remote work should be made on an individual case-by-case basis and done only to serve the best interests of the program and the American public. The committee urges the secretary to bring federal employees back to the workplace to fulfill the mission of serving the American public.”

The bill would also reduce administrative funding, “considering the remote work abuse seen at several agencies,” the subcommittee wrote.

Federal unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union have repeatedly pushed back on the calls to return federal employees to the office full-time. Union leaders have said federal telework options and other workplace flexibilities are crucial for recruiting and retaining the future federal workforce.

“We maintain a simple position — that telework and remote work policies should be tailored to the specific needs of the agency and the nature of the work, rather than pursuing a one-size-fits-all approach for the whole of government through legislation,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley wrote in a statement to Federal News Network.

NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald called for the appropriations committee to work on funding agencies, rather than targeting telework policies for the federal workforce.

“The more telework an agency is able to grant, the less office space taxpayers need to pay for, as proven by some agencies who have already started to downsize and save money,” Greenwald wrote in a statement. “It is time to accept the data that telework works and focus on funding the government, so it has the resources to properly deliver for the American people.”

AFGE pointed to a recent study from the Congressional Budget Office that found federal employees, on average, are working remotely less often than private sector employees. Regarding office space utilization, AFGE said it has no objections to the idea of agencies letting go of physical space they don’t need.

“We should be clear about the facts,” Kelley wrote. “As [the Office of Personnel Management] has stated to Congress in a recent hearing, 54% of the federal workforce never worked remotely a single day — including during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The nature of their work does not allow it. These are people like nurses, correctional officers, border patrol agents, transportation security officers and many others.”

“The fact is that hundreds of thousands of employees who have public-facing duties, like screening cargo and protecting the ports, maintaining the National Parks or meeting with taxpayers to deliver government services report to the workplace every day,” Greenwald added. “Those who are telework-eligible perform the same duties at their telework location as they would while in a traditional workplace. Telework has been around for decades and is subject to strict oversight and management approval.”

The committee’s report language, though, isn’t the only instance of House appropriators targeting federal telework and calling for a large-scale return to the office. In the House’s 2025 defense appropriations bill, for instance, lawmakers included a provision that would, if enacted, severely restrict federal telework and remote work options for civilian DoD employees.

The provision would effectively ban telework for the DoD civilian workforce by prohibiting any government funds from going toward “the costs of teleworking or remote working” for “any employee or contractor of the Department of Defense on a regular and recurring basis,” the House committee wrote in report language last week.

The return-to-office push began in part with an April 2023 Office of Management and Budget memo, which told agencies to bring telework-eligible employees into the office for at least 50% of their work hours.

The Biden administration has said a majority of agencies have, by now, completed the required return-to-office changes. OMB Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in April that agencies would be held accountable for fully implementing the 50% in-the-office presence.

Still, Aderholt and other appropriations committee members are pushing for an even larger in-office presence of the federal workforce.

“I urge the secretaries of these agencies to bring federal employees back to the workplace immediately so that the American people can be served in a way they deserve,” Aderholt wrote. “Simply put, it’s time to get back to work.”

The post More House appropriators target federal telework, office space first appeared on Federal News Network.

The General Services Administration (GSA) deals with many governmentwide concerns, including real estate and office space. For more than 20 years, auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have considered federal real property management a high-risk issue. GAO recently reiterated a list of recommendations for the GSA on real estate. For more, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked with GAO’s director of physical infrastructure issues, Heather Krause.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin The General Services Administration deals with many government-wide concerns including real estate and office space. For more than 20 years, though, auditors at the Government Accountability Office have considered federal Real Property Management a high-risk issue.  GAO recently reiterated a list of recommendations for the GSA about real estate. We get more now from the GAO is director of physical infrastructure issues. Heather Kraus. Heather, good to have you back.

Heather Krause Thank you, Tom.

Tom Temin And this is a restatement of some longstanding things, some of them going back to 2003, and so forth. Any new recommendations for let’s start there for GSA on managing real estate and property?

Heather Krause We have 27 outstanding recommendations to the GSA right now. And what this recent work did was highlight the five that are priority recommendations. And so among the ones, so you know, they actually closed two of our priority recommendations last year, and we had added (an) additional one this year. That recommendation is focused on looking at the deferred maintenance backlog and GSAs plans to address deferred maintenance backlog. You know, there’s about a $3.1 billion deferred maintenance and repair backlog in fiscal year 2022. And so, we found that GSA did not communicate in its budget documents the amount of funding or timeframes that it would take to address that backlog. And so they did take some steps to address, you know, and provide some information and their 2025 budget justification, (but) we’re still looking for some additional information on those funding amounts and timeframes. And that kind of information is really important to inform decisionmakers about how funding levels could affect GSA’s backlog and really help them evaluate the proposal GSA has to address that backlog.

Tom Temin And that backlog applies to federally-owned properties.

Heather Krause Correct. And I should add too…actually, I think I maybe misspoke. I think the other recommendation — that one was around a little bit longer — but the more recent one was on space utilization data. I guess, just to speak to that. I mean, again, across the board, these five recommendations are really to address, Tom, as you said, up front, where we have seen a real high-risk area for the federal government, which is addressing that federal management federal property portfolio. And so another recommendation we made here was to look at plans to share information on space utilization data. And so what we found, and what we’re looking for is — they’ve taken some steps to share broadleaf information on how agencies can collect or look at methods for identifying space utilization. And they’ve done some things to share that information, but really looking for them to continue to have a documented plan to ensure those efforts are publicized, including to those that do not use GSA space, or portfolio planning services. And so kind of making all agencies aware of the cost and benefits of the various methods and technologies for collecting space utilization data. That kind of information, again, would really help agencies identify cost effective methods for collecting that information, and really informing the kind of decisions on potential changes to their real estate footprints.

Tom Temin Right. But they need the cooperation of agencies though, don’t they? The occupants who are having trouble figuring out who’s going to be in the office, who is not. And what percentage of the time?

Heather Krause Yeah, I think what a lot of these recommendations do is improve that kind of data that’s needed to help agencies make those types of decisions. Again, coming back to that space utilization, how can agencies — so, like, GSA is looking to really work with agencies to figure out: what are tools and ways that they can better understand utilization so they can assess what are we using? What might be opportunities to dispose of property that’s unneeded.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Heather Kraus, Director of Physical infrastructure Issues at the GAO. And that idea of disposal of property. That’s something they talk about for decades at a time. And there are commissions and looks at properties. And sometimes after all of that, they find a garage somewhere they can tear down or sell. There’s a more fundamental issue, though, isn’t there?

Heather Krause Yeah, this disposing of unneeded property has been a long-standing challenge. Sort of managing the property and addressing issues of disposing unneeded property has been a long-standing issue. Another recommendation that we made to help address that was trying to get — again, as you point out, Tom, that there is federal agencies that are also involved in in making these decisions, but looking for GSA to develop a process to collect and share lessons learned from what they had was, which was a temporary approach for reducing the federal government’s real property inventory. So there was a law back in 2016 that set up a process for them to select and prepare unneeded federal properties for sale. The first couple rounds of process did face some setbacks and challenges in carrying it out. So what we’ve recommended, to improve that last round of the process as well as looking ahead, is having a mechanism or a process to share those lessons learned, leverage those stakeholders that were involved — their knowledge and addressing potential challenges with disposing of real property. That kind of sharing of information, I think will provide stakeholders, including the Congress, with insights on how, you know, the federal government might better dispose of its Israel property.

Tom Temin And of course, GSA leases, probably way more space than the government owns for occupancy by agencies. And did you find are there open recommendations on the leasing side of things? Besides the occupancy information?

Heather Krause We don’t have a leasing recommendation when it comes to something that’s priority. But I think, you know, we’re often looking at ways — again, I think key areas is improving that data to help, GSA and agencies make decisions on federal property. Another way that we found in our work to improve that was around the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of some of the street address information that you find in it’s public database. So you know, when we looked at that issue, again, lack of reliable data on federal assets is really one of the main reasons is federal property management’s on our high-risk list. And GSA has a publicly available database, you know, of their buildings, structures and lands. The public can take a look at that for any number of reasons, including finding property that they may be interested in leasing or purchasing from the federal government with a space that the government no longer needs. But when we looked at that there were numerous issues with the database which can reduce that kind of benefit that we’re looking for, from sharing that kind of information. So we made a recommendation, again, to improve that data. And GSA is collaborating with OMB on looking to provide guidance to agencies to help them improve the quality of the data, set up data quality programs. And what we’re looking for is them to follow through and working closely with OMB and federal property officials to complete those inter to other efforts to improve the data. Because that kind of reliable data will really increase its usefulness to the public, and really support that disposition of unneeded property.

Tom Temin And the street addresses. How is it? Do you suppose they don’t have accurate data on street addresses? I just looked it up. And they show the White House at 1601 Pennsylvania Avenue. Just kidding. But it seems like that would be kind of fundamental.

Heather Krause Some of it has to do with kind of formatting and incomplete information. And so, I think some of this is looking to ensure that there’s complete, accurate, you know, formatted information in those data databases to make it more reliable.

Tom Temin And in the 20 years, you’ve been developing these recommendations, and some of them get carried over from, you know, biannual report and so on. There have been a lot of building services administrators, commissioners, and a lot of administrators. Do you get the sense that GSA says, ‘Yeah, we agree, we got to get to this.’ Or what’s the response been?

Heather Krause The GSA has been very responsive to our recommendations. We have a way to measure progress of agencies. So we look back over recommendations made four years ago. And in the most recent report, we found that they had actually implemented 100% of the recommendations that we made four years ago. We have found it similarly in the recent years, they’ve had over 80%, or up to 100% in recent years, as well, of recommendations are implemented. So they are very responsive. I think it’s important to draw attention to the recommendations that we do in this particular report to ensure that we continue to make those types of improvements as we tackle this longstanding challenge of managing federal real property.

The post GSA gets a refreshed set of recommendations for dealing with real property first appeared on Federal News Network.

But beyond hammering out agency budgets for next year, the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee has tacked on several policy riders that could impact federal employees and retirees in other ways as well.

One policy rider included in the committee’s report language, for instance, would bar any investments through the Thrift Savings Plan that are based on environmental, social or governance (ESG) criteria.

House Republicans also tried last budget cycle to include the “No ESG in the TSP” policy rider in the spending legislation, but it ultimately did not end up in the final appropriations package.

The launch of the voluntary TSP mutual fund window in June 2022 brought more than 5,000 new mutual fund options to TSP participants who choose to enroll in the window and pay a fee for the service. But the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has said if an anti-ESG policy is enacted, it would bring the TSP’s new mutual fund window to an early demise.

Keeping track of 5,000 mutual funds would become too burdensome and open FRTIB to potential legal exposure, the board has said.

“There is no practical, cost-efficient way to monitor each of the roughly 5,000 individual mutual funds’ holdings,” FRTIB Director of External Affairs Kim Weaver said in 2023.

FRTIB has publicly opposed the provisions that aim to bar ESG investments. Weaver has also said there would be ripple effects from the provision, if it’s enacted. It would cost the TSP additional money to wind down the mutual fund window, and TSP participants may be exposed to potential financial losses if they had to transfer their investments back to the main TSP funds.

Appropriations committee members plan to mark up the financial services and general government 2025 spending bill, as well as several others, on Thursday afternoon. Here are some of the other policy riders federal employees should pay attention to:

Telework, office space in 2025 spending bill

In the report language, committee members also noted previous and upcoming requirements for the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration to report to Congress on federal telework and office space.

In the 2024 enacted appropriations package, lawmakers included a now-approaching deadline for OMB to share all agencies’ work environment plans with Congress. Those plans, which stem from the initial return-to-office memo in April 2023, detail agencies’ recent telework policy changes.

OMB’s deadline to submit all agencies’ return-to-office plans to Congress is coming up in late June.

“The committee looks forward to receiving the report from OMB on governmentwide telework,” House appropriators wrote in the committee’s report. “The committee [also] expects agencies under the jurisdiction of the subcommittee to reduce their office footprint if their average office space utilization rate is less than 60%, based on a benchmark of 150 usable square feet per person.”

At the same time, the committee said GSA has not yet provided its required report on how agencies can reduce office space requirements based on lessons learned from using telework during the COVID–19 pandemic.

The federal footprint has been steadily declining, but agencies still holding onto excess and underutilized office space is a main reason the Government Accountability Office has kept federal real property management on its High-Risk List for over 20 years.

In the 2024 spending package, Congress called on all agencies with an office space utilization rate of less than 60% to submit a description of their current efforts to reduce their physical footprint, the total office space costs, the average utilization rate and the estimated cost of underutilized space.

If enacted, the 2025 spending bill from House appropriators would also give GSA and OMB a new 180-day deadline to offer further data and recommendations on how to best consolidate federal office space, while disposing of unneeded federal real estate.

Continuing a few longstanding provisions

In addition to the slate of new policy riders, House appropriators are also looking to maintain numerous provisions that have been around for years, and in some cases decades. Many of those provisions have become practically standard in spending bills each fiscal year.

For example, one continued provision requires agencies to pay OPM a fee for processing retirement claims for employees who separate early from federal service.

Another would continue to direct agency employees to use official time — or time spent working on union-related activities while on the job — in “an honest effort to perform official duties,” the committee report language said.

Additionally, a provision often referred to as the Hyde amendment would maintain the current ban on any government funding from going toward abortions through the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program.

IRS pilot, FBI headquarters and more

The full appropriations committee also maintained several provisions from the subcommittee’s initial 2025 spending and policy proposals earlier this month.

Notably, the committee plans to implement steep spending cuts for the IRS, and aims to completely defund IRS’ free Direct File platform.

The lawmakers are also looking to decline a $3.5 billion request for construction on the new FBI headquarters building during 2025. The appropriations bill would also withhold all current funds allocated for the GSA construction project.

Democratic committee members, unsurprisingly, have come out in strong opposition to the spending cuts and many of the policy riders. Some lawmakers said they’re concerned about the ability of several relatively small agencies to handle large budget cuts. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) warned last week that the House GOP bill would force agencies to implement staff reductions to make ends meet.

The post Policy riders to watch as House appropriators mark up 2025 spending bills first appeared on Federal News Network.

As House appropriators outline plans to make steep government spending cuts for fiscal 2025, Democrats are warning that reduced agency budgets would lead to federal employee layoffs, and by extension, worsening federal services.

The fiscal 2025 financial services and general government appropriations bill is now heading to the full appropriations committee for consideration. Members of the GOP-led House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee advanced the legislation — along party lines and without amendments — during a markup Wednesday morning.

But Democratic subcommittee members opposed to the spending cuts said they’re concerned about the ability of the relatively small agencies included in that specific appropriations bill to handle large budget cuts.

“Our agencies often have smaller budgets, and thus less flexibility to deal with the cuts,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday during the subcommittee’s markup of the legislation. “Larger agencies under the jurisdiction of other subcommittees can scale back grant programs and shift funding around to make ends meet. It’s tough, and perhaps may not be appropriate, but it is easier than this bill.”

Hoyer warned that the House GOP bill, as is, would leave many agencies with no choice but to implement staff reductions to make ends meet.

“Our agencies have to lay off staff, severely undermining their ability to function at the most basic levels,” Hoyer said. “That has direct consequences on the American people.”

Under the 2024 enacted budget, which included significant spending cuts, some agencies are already limiting new hires and in some cases considering plans to reduce their workforces. The State Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, are looking to make staffing cuts in the Foreign Service and the VA health care workforce.

The House appropriations legislation comes in stark contrast to the White House budget request proposed in March. House Republicans proposed a discretionary spending allocation totaling $23.6 billion, which is close to 20% below the Biden administration’s request. The bill would cut spending to 10% below the enacted level for 2024.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called the spending levels and several GOP policy riders “unacceptable.”

That steep of a budget cut, Hoyer added, “belies the importance of the agencies for which we appropriate money.”

For the government’s lead agency on all things workforce, House Republicans’ spending plans would give the Office of Personnel Management a budget of $477 million for 2025. It’s an increase of $29.1 million over the enacted 2024 level — but the number still falls $31.4 million short of the White House’s request for the coming fiscal year.

At the same time, House Republicans, in the bill are calling for OPM to specifically aim to modernize IT and strengthen the government’s acquisition workforce.

The bill doesn’t include any language related to the federal pay raise for 2025, appearing to align with Biden’s 2% raise proposal for most General Schedule employees next year.

The draft bill also includes IRS spending cuts and proposes completely defunding IRS’ free Direct File platform. The legislation would cut the budget for IRS for 2025 to $10.1 billion, which is $2.2 billion below the enacted level for fiscal 2024.

The cuts would be most severe for IRS enforcement, which would see a $2 billion reduction in funding, House appropriators explained in a summary of the draft 2025 spending bill. Hoyer took particular issue with that component of House Republicans’ plans for IRS.

“The authority to transfer funds are not provided for in this bill,” Hoyer said. “In other words, we’re cutting our collection department by $2 billion. That’s the very essence of trying to be able to afford that which we’re buying and not paying for.”

The General Services Administration would see spending cuts for its use of the Federal Buildings Fund in 2025, according to the draft legislation. Lawmakers are calling for a cap of $8.9 billion to come out of that fund, which is nearly $1.8 billion below the 2025 budget request.

In one policy rider on the appropriations bill, House Republicans rejected the Biden administration’s request of $3.5 billion to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland. The draft bill would also withhold current funds allocated for the massive construction project.

Already, GSA has said construction on the new building will take more than a decade. Construction on the new FBI headquarters is not expected to begin until 2029, and FBI employees would not be working out of the new space until 2036. But in the spending bill, House Republicans said GSA should either continue operating out of the current building, or choose an existing, federally owned building in Washington, D.C., as a new headquarters.

The Executive Office of the President would receive $815.5 million for 2025, according to the spending bill. That’s $105.6 million below the budget request. As part of that appropriation, the Office of Management and Budget would get $126 million.

Several of the bill’s other policy riders specifically target Biden administration policies that Republicans have opposed for years. The legislation in its current form would ban the implementation of President Joe Biden’s executive orders on climate change, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA).

Additionally, the Small Business Administration would not be able to fund any climate change initiatives under the bill. In total, the House subcommittee proposed about $854.1 million for SBA, a cut of $117.1 million from the White House’s request, and $187.6 million below the enacted level for 2024.

Once the Senate subcommittee releases and votes on its version of the draft appropriations bill, House and Senate lawmakers will have to reconcile any differences between the two versions of the bill before voting on it, or sending it to the president’s desk for a signature.

The post Democrats warn layoffs ahead as House GOP proposes agency spending cuts first appeared on Federal News Network.

The GOP-led House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2025 general government spending bill rejects a $3.5 billion proposal from the General Services Administration to finance a new FBI headquarters building in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The spending bill passed out of the general government and financial services subcommittee along party lines on Wednesday morning. It’s now slated to be considered by the full committee. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) reportedly urged House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) to prohibit taxpayer funding for any new FBI headquarters facility.

The Biden administration nominally ended a decade-long disagreement over the future of the FBI headquarters when GSA announced the new Greenbelt site last November. GSA selected a Maryland site over competing sites in Virginia.

But ever since, lawmakers have been scrutinizing GSA’s site selection and the broader plan for replacing the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown DC.

GSA’s budget proposal

GSA’s fiscal 2025 budget request proposed the $3.5 billion as an upfront investment in the new FBI headquarters building.

Agency officials want to allocate the investment through a new Federal Capital Revolving Fund that would “fully fund the costs of very large civilian real property capital projects that are difficult to accommodate in the annual appropriations process,” GSA’s budget request states.

Under the proposal, GSA would then pay back into the revolving fund in annual payments of $233 million over the next 15 years.

GSA would also draw on funding that Congress has already appropriated for acquisition and construction of a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt. Lawmakers have approved about $845 million for the project so far, including $200 million in the fiscal 2024 spending deal reached in late March.

But in addition to rejecting the $3.5 billion funding request, the House Appropriations Committee bill would also prohibit previous funding from being spent on the FBI headquarters project until GSA sends the committee a “spend plan to continue operation of the current headquarters or to identify another existing, federally-owned DC building to serve as the headquarters.”

While House appropriators have started to move their spending bills, appropriators in the Democrat-led Senate have yet to start marking up their corresponding 2025 spending legislation.

Wray talks FBI headquarters

Meanwhile, FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers this week that his agency is supporting GSA’s work to establish the new Greenbelt site.

“We are working closely with GSA,” Wray said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. He noted GSA submitted a report to Congress in March detailing its plans for site acquisition and design of the new facility.

Wray had called GSA’s decision-making into question shortly after last November’s announcement. He told FBI employees in an email that he had “concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan.”

Wray’s email cited concerns about then-Public Buildings Service Commissioner Nina Albert’s decision to override the recommendations of a selection panel that had recommended Springfield, Va., for the new FBI headquarters.

In a statement at the time, GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan pushed back on Wray’s claims. She said his “suggestion that there was inappropriate interference is unfounded.”

Carnahan also said GSA stands behind “the process, the decision, and all of the public servants who carefully followed the process and made a good decision on behalf of the FBI and the public.”

During this week’s hearing in the Senate, Wray did not raise any further public concerns about the decision to locate the new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt.

“We are working closely with GSA, in cooperation with them, in full compliance with the law,” Wray said. “The specifics of exactly what conversations, what meetings – that part I couldn’t tell you right here right now. But my understanding is that we continue to work closely with GSA on the project.”

The post House appropriators reject GSA’s $3.5B plan for new FBI headquarters first appeared on Federal News Network.

A new rule from the Energy Department means the eventual end of gas and oil to heat new and renovated federal buildings. And, DOE officials believe, the rule will save tens of millions of dollars. For details on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin, Federal News Network Deputy Editor talked with David Smedick, the federal policy manager for the carbon-free buildings program at the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Interview Transcript:

David Smedick Yeah, absolutely. We’re really excited about it. So we do think it’s a big deal. And I think a lot of people across the industry recognize the importance of this role, coming down from DOE and the [Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP)]office. And so, we believe a key pillar of the federal building decarbonization process here. So under the sustainability plan, from this administration, you’re really looking at having net zero buildings across the federal portfolio over the next couple of decades. And this is one of the key pieces when you’re dealing with on site emissions, you need to zero those out. And that’s essentially what this role does for new construction on major renovations. It partners really well with, say, the building performance standard for federal buildings with the existing energy efficiency rules. This is a new way for the federal government to move forward and making sure that those on site fossil fuel emissions are eliminated from getting that portfolio of new construction, major renovations as we move forward.

Jared Serbu And the requirement is by 2030. And given the pace at which the government moves on a lot of things, how realistic is that? Given what we understand about their ability to implement clean energy projects, etc.

David Smedick Yeah, we think this one is doable. It’s been part of the law that was passed in 2007, where these rules and those targets, with the years implemented here. So looking back at over the next couple of years, the new projects that are coming online need to hit the 90% reduction mark, but then that that full fossil free, key marker goes into effect for 2030 and moving forward. And what we’re seeing is that, especially by 2030 and really now, your new construction projects can hit these targets. I think that it’s smart the rules that were finalized have those pieces where you can petition for if you’re really struggling with technical and feasibility, whether it’s a space construction or there’s the technology really isn’t there. And you can prove that to DOE, you can move forward with the project, just working with the agency to work around those pieces. But the heat pump technologies that are out there, which is the big ticket for this, really, it’s about those, HVAC systems. You have efficient all electric options on the market now, that we think you can be building these buildings with. And that’s what I think is really important. So by 2030, from our perspective, you really should be good to go. And it’s going to be a really exciting time because it’s going to really help move that market forward as well as lead by example policy.

Jared Serbu Are some agencies going to run into situations where they’re just constrained by what’s locally available where there really is no clean energy available from the grid.

David Smedick Well, so this role in particular is really focused on the on site emissions. And so what that means is when you’re combusting in a fuel on site, whether that’s for the heating, whether it’s for cooking, or hot water. So when it comes to the grid, there are other policies in place from the federal government and standards and processes they’re working on to clean the grid and make sure that you’re procuring it correctly. But this regulation is really about those on site emissions associated with the equipment that’s in moveable onsite kind of work there. So your HVAC, your hot water cooking and clothes drying you may have that would be fossil fuel powered in the past, just making sure that’s all efficient electric equipment.

Jared Serbu Talk a bit about the ways in which this might cause some developments outside of the government and spur innovation that might affect the private sector as well.

David Smedick Yeah, that’s one of the reasons we’re really excited about it. On the face of it, having more buildings from the federal government, be all electric is really important for a lot less air pollution, for making sure that you have cost effective strategies that use efficiency on that side for electrification on the building itself. But as you just noted, the the broader impact of this, the federal government’s purchasing power is really significant. And that’s something we’re excited about. And this is indicating to the market that this is the direction that we can be moving and we should be moving, and we need to be moving across the market. So whether that’s private sector public buildings as well. And that’s something that, here at RMI, we’re really leaning into and think there’s a big opportunity for with the federal government taking this move, other government entities and public buildings can be moving in this direction as well. So smart use of taxpayer dollars, right here dollars, whatever you want to call it. Public money can be here for efficient electric buildings on the new construction and major innovation side. This policy should be a waterfall moment for that. And we really think that it will signal to the manufacturers of these clean energy and clean technology equipment that you have buyers ready to go now. And this is something that I think they’ll build up to as we talk about that 2030 mark comes forward.

Jared Serbu As you mentioned earlier, this particular rule only applies to new construction and major renovations. One thing we know about the federal government is that there are a lot of old facilities out there. How much of a concern are those, and are there other efforts that get at those issues?

David Smedick Yeah, definitely. So the other policy I mentioned, which is exciting, is the federal building performance standard. So this was an initiative that four out of one of, the president’s earlier executive orders, making sure that we have a decarbonized federal government. Is this kind of the tagline on it? There’s lots of details within there, but that federal building performance standard is essentially saying, that for existing buildings, we’re going to create a pathway of renovation moving forward and have specific targets by which you need to reduce your energy consumption associated with onsite fuels. And so, that’s been going on for I think it was released about a year and a half ago, maybe two years. And so the agencies are out there kind of putting their plans together for, I think it’s about 30% or so, because their existing portfolio needs to hit zero on site emission renovation work by 2030 or so or 2035, I don’t remember the exact date to be honest, so we can look that up. But, that building performance standard is something that the White House has been has pulled together in moving forward and working with agencies to implement. So when it comes those older facilities that federal building performance standard is, I think really going to take those moving forward. They work really nicely and pair together this new construction and then that retrofit standard.

Jared Serbu And I guess the last thing I’d ask you, David, is what do you see as the challenges toward implementation here? You said there’s some waivers and some workarounds for agencies that end up really struggling with this. What do you think those struggles are going to be the extent they come up.

David Smedick Yeah I think some of those space constraints at different times. I think that’s when you do have some of the older buildings that may be going through a major renovation. Some of the technologies are a little different. So, when you’re plotting out how you’re going to actually physically install something in a space, you’re going to need to evaluate, ok, do I have the right set up here? Is it going to have the right airflow, associated with the HVAC equipment that’s needed for this new efficient electrical equipment versus what you maybe had beforehand? And so would that require a new structural change to the renovation? Or is this a way that I could petition and understand that we just technically can’t do that, because it is not part of our plans or something. So I think those are some of the struggles that will run into and we’ll see through the petition process. I think a lot more of what the the actual on the ground issues are. I think that’s where we’re going to see what buildings are running into. But I’d also say that I think  the FEMP office has really kind of administering this and pushing the rule out. They’re going to have implementation guidance here coming out. They don’t have an exact date, but that’s, I think, really going to drive a lot of information for folks out into the world of, ok, what is FEMP anticipating some of the issues are going to be in, how are they going to work with the agencies to make sure that those issues are either overcomable and they can get the solution implemented, or if they need to rework their implementation guidance a little bit and understand what the flexibility needs are for folks so that implementation guidance, once it comes out from FEMP, I think is going to answer a lot of questions that folks have. At least that’s my hope.

The post That office-building boiler will soon be scrap metal first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The Postal Service is hitting pause on some of its network modernization plans, but not all of them. USPS recently told lawmakers it will hold off on deciding whether to move some mail processing operations to larger regional hubs until January 2025. But USPS is still moving ahead with other facility changes. Among them, the agency is proceeding with plans to open 13 of these large hubs, called Regional Processing and Distribution Centers. USPS will also push ahead with plans to transport mail and packages across its network with fewer, but fuller truckloads. The agency runs about 50,000 truck trips a day, at about 40% capacity.
  (U.S. Postal Service provides update on historic modernization efforts - Postal Service)
• The Army is ready to adopt more digital engineering capabilities and processes. The Army's new digital engineering policy, signed yesterday, is all about changing the way the service develops warfighting capabilities in the future. Gabe Camarillo, the undersecretary of the Army, said at the AFCEA NoVa Enterprise IT Day that the policy initially focuses on three commodity areas — like ground vehicles — where these digital tools already are more mature. "We are looking to benefit from that utilization of digital engineering tools to be able to help establish the right processes in the Army, the right training and really how do we adapt our institutional approach to be able to accommodate more digital engineering," Camarillo said.
  (New Army policy details future of digital engineering - Army Publishing Directorate)
• The Labor Department is embarking on a state-by-state refresh of unemployment insurance (UI) systems. Those systems were pushed to their limits at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a nearly 3,000% surge in UI claims in 2020. New Jersey, one of the first states to receive funding, launched a pilot program of its new unemployment benefits system. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said the department is now funding projects in 18 other states at a time when its systems are experiencing historically low levels of strain. “Now is the time between storms to fix the roof, when the unemployment rate is at historic lows," Su said.
  (Labor Dept backs state-by-state refresh of UI benefits systems rocked by pandemic - Federal News Network)
• A team of university researchers from around the country found that military officers who outrank their military doctors receive better care than lower-ranked patients. A new study finds that high-powered patients receive more effort and resources than patients of equal or lower rank in military emergency departments. The researchers also found that reallocation of resources and effort came at the expense of lower-power patients. Race and gender played a role in these power dynamics. The study found that male doctors are a lot more responsive to patient power than female doctors, while white doctors respond to powerful patients equally, regardless of their race. Black physicians give “off-the-charts” treatment to high-powered Black patients.
  ( Officers who outrank their doctors get better care than lower-rank patients, new study finds - Federal News Network)
• The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is one step closer to getting an extension and new oversight requirements. The House yesterday passed the Modernizing Government Technology Reform Act by voice vote. A bill sponsored by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) would extend the TMF to 2030 and revise the criteria by which agency proposals are evaluated. The MGT Reform Act was one of two technology-related bills the House passed. It also approved, by voice vote, the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act, sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). The bill, among other things, would require the Office of Management and Budget and every agency to name a senior government service delivery lead responsible for improving citizen services. Both bills now move to the Senate for consideration.
  (House passes bill to extend TMF to 2030 - Congress.gov)
• The Army’s top cybersecurity official is moving on. Maj. Gen. Jan Norris left the Army Office of the Chief Information Officer last week. He had led cyber policy issues as a deputy CIO for the past two years. His next assignment will be as commander of the Army’s 335th Signal Command, the Georgia-based command that, among other responsibilities, oversees the Army Reserve’s cyber forces.
  (Fond Farewell - Army CIO)
• The Department of Health and Human Services is launching a new project to develop automated cybersecurity tools for healthcare facilities. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) plans to invest more than $50 million in the effort. The goal is to develop easier ways for hospitals to find and fix vulnerabilities in their software. One of the big challenges is that hospitals and health facilities rely on a wide range of complex and interconnected technologies. ARPA-H will hold a proposers day in June to discuss the project in more detail.
  (HHS research arm looks to boost hospital cyber defenses with $50M project - Federal News Network)
• A new panel of cloud and technology experts from across the government will help guide the FedRAMP program through its next stages. The General Services Administration said the new Technology Advisory Group (TAG) will offer expertise to agencies who are trying to navigate risk management issues around cloud and emerging technologies. It will also advise the board that manages the FedRAMP program. The first members of the TAG are cyber and cloud authorization experts from seven different agencies.
  (FedRAMP launches Technical Advisory Group to help guide program decision making - GSA)
• The Space Force is standing up two new Integrated Mission Delta units this summer. Last year, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman created two Integrated Mission Delta provisional units focused on electromagnetic warfare and positioning, navigation, and timing mission areas. Space officials are now looking to restructure missile warning and space domain awareness mission areas. Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, the Space Systems Command chief, and Lt. Gen. David Miller, who leads Space Operations Command, are currently conducting mission analysis of the operational deltas.
  (Space Force to stand up two integrated units this summer - Federal News Network)

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Federal workplaces aren’t what they used to be, not with a third or half of employees teleworking at least some part of the week. Since only a few people telework 100% of the time, that creates difficulties in managing office space. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with someone dealing with this issue, the Chief Administrative Officer of the Homeland Security Department’s Science and Technology Directorate, Margie Rowe.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin We know what the director of S&T does, science and technology. What does the administrative officer do?

Margie Rowe I take care of the facilities, the fleet, the mail, the personal property. Part of keeping and running.

Tom Temin And how have things changed from the pandemic to now? Well, let’s start with how things changed when the pandemic hit. And now we’re kind of halfway out of it in terms of people coming to work.

Margie Rowe When it hit, we went totally telework. I mean, it was part of keeping everyone safe. And out of that, we realized that we can work and be successful from our homes. So that was the impetus, along with the S1’s priorities for DHS to consolidate us down into fewer facilities and to reduce the footprint where possible. So as an operational component. But our operations are in our labs and in the field. We were able to reduce our footprint and now we’ve ended up here on campus.

Tom Temin So on an average day, if there are a thousand employees, what percentage, how many out of a thousand are coming in on a given day?

Margie Rowe On a given day here? About 10 to 15% come in across S&T. In our laboratory facilities, they’ve been coming in almost every day throughout the pandemic based on their work. Our work here, program managers, project managers, communications, facilities, IT a lot of that work can be done from home. So, we’ve been lucky and being able to stay at home.

Tom Temin Because there’s a big building here and lots of floor space, but you have reconfigured it such that it accommodates the fact that people only 15% of headquarters people are coming in. Tell us more about that.

Margie Rowe That was done when we moved. We moved out of Vermont Avenue and that was a large move. You know, everybody had their own office. Everybody had all cabinets of paper. So, we got people to go virtual, worked with CIO, installed Teams. So that allows us to do collaboration. And we reduced our footprint so that we do a reservation system. So, the executive front office has permanent location. And then the people you would want if you were coming to the building and you needed help, the facilities office, the CIO help desk, the security office, the personal property office, those people have space every day, all day, same location. Today I’m sitting in a cube that I normally sit in when I come in, make a reservation and just come in and bring your stuff with you every day and then take it home every night.

Tom Temin Now, decades ago, I edited trade newspapers for the government market, and we depended on mail coming in. Just out of curiosity, this just came into my head. What is the state of paper mail that comes to a government agency like this? Does anyone mail anything with a stamp on it to DHS anymore?

Margie Rowe You would be surprised. Yes, we have mail that comes in every day. It gets delivered to our receptionist area and then gets passed out to the various offices across S&T. If it looks important, you know, sometimes we’ll have receptionist will open it up, especially who it’s addressed to, and they’ll send an email, or they’ll place a call and say, you’ve got mail.

Tom Temin We don’t have people sorting big bins of mail and running it through the halls and bins anymore.

Margie Rowe We probably do. That is done on a DHS wide level. So, I just see when the mail guy comes to our portion of the building, but he is pushing a cart, one of those old-fashioned carts, and they hand you your mail.

Tom Temin Some things never change, I guess because I saw an in and out basket somewhere. I think that was FedEx.

Margie Rowe Yes, that was at the receptionist. We have incoming mail, outgoing mail, FedEx, UPS, U.S. mail.

Tom Temin And what about paper consumption with only again in this building or the headquarters, with only 15% of the people in, I imagine copying and stapling and distributing memos. That must be a fraction of what it was too.

Margie Rowe Yes. We did a large effort when we left Vermont Avenue. We did a large effort of digitizing our records. So, we’ve worked with NARA on official records and digitized and move things off. We had a lot of people that spent a lot of time standing at a copy scan machine, scanning things. So, we’ve reduced our records. It’s all now virtual. If we need official documents, wet signatures, those types of things. Our EXEC Sec office takes care of those official records. But everything else now, if you want it printed, you come into the office. And we do still have those people. They come in the day they’re here, they print, and they take it all home and read it on paper.

Tom Temin Yes. And you probably don’t have encouraging people to have printers at home.

Margie Rowe No, we’re not allowed to have printers at home. DHS work has to be done on a DHS computer or a DHS printer. So, you should not be printing at home.

Tom Temin Got it. And the other question I had was telephones because it used to be that telephones were location based, even desk based. And you know, you know, 703 – 695 is the Pentagon, etc., etc.. Now not so much. And sometimes nobody answers the phone. That’s officially on a website for government agency.

Margie Rowe The DHS number does go to a person and then they will route it. There’s a number for S&T which rings at our one reception desk. But like my office phone that was at VTA, it now rings through Microsoft Teams. And I have my cell phone. So, you know, I have two numbers that ring I have to answer them.

Tom Temin But there’s still a physical receptionist even in this day and age.

Margie Rowe There’s one. Yes. And she also does. Well, she, he it’s a rotating position. They do facility support as well because sometimes, you know, people come in, mail gets delivered. People have questions. They don’t know how to get to a conference room. They don’t know where a building is. So, you do have to have a person to answer those questions.

Tom Temin Do you ever get calls from Doctor Kusnezov, the director saying, I’m lonely here. Can we have some more people in the office?

Margie Rowe We don’t get calls. We usually get emails. You know, we had an all-hands-on Monday, so a lot of people came in. He luckily is very personable. So, you know, he’ll sit. He has a little lobby reception area. He’ll sit and read the paper, go through a magazine, talk to people. So, there’s always somebody here. As with most agencies, I’m assuming Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are big days, Mondays a little lonely, Fridays a little lonely.

Tom Temin So I would think for people that may have kids at home or noisy pets, it would be like a pleasure to come here because that cube farm was quiet, sedate. Some nice views if you want to get up and stretch.

Margie Rowe It can be yes on days when there’s nothing going on. Monday we had everyone in. It was loud because it was like, I haven’t seen you since the last time we were all here. But today, you know, we come in, we work, we use headphones and earbuds when we’re on calls and in meetings. And, you know, it’s nice to see people again.

Tom Temin Now, are you a science and technology person or are you a federal administrator type person?

Margie Rowe I’m an administrator.

Tom Temin And how long have you been doing this type of work?

Margie Rowe I’ve been doing this for 15 years.

Tom Temin So you were pre-pandemic. And it must be just a sea change for people that do. What you do is to keep agencies running kind of unseen in the background.

Margie Rowe Yes it was. And people didn’t realize everything we did because it was just getting done until you move. And then all of a sudden they’re like, wait, where’s this? One of the things we did to help with that is when we started the move process. I did a started out as monthly, then it went to weekly chat and I was on teams, staff logged on. We talked about the move, I answered questions, and one of the surprising things out of that is people know me. I don’t know who they are because on teams you don’t see when you’re presenting. I couldn’t see all 200 faces, so I saw no one and they all see me now and they’re like, hi. I’m like, oh, hi, how are you?

Tom Temin And you must have made some modifications. Since you are the chief administrative officer, you can’t just have open pantry, kitchen views and boxes of cornflakes in the background.

Margie Rowe True. Yes. I you know, we have the virtual background, so it always it always looks very nice. But here, you know, we do have something that’s just come up recently is now that we’re back in the office, all of those office etiquettes that you had, if you come in every day, you remember them. If you don’t come in every day, sometimes you might need to be reminded, take out your trash.

Tom Temin And have you had to remind people, say on teams, when it’s a small meeting, even there, there’s protocols such as like no bathrobes.

Margie Rowe And we haven’t had issues with dress. Although the fun thing is we have seen pets come across in the background. We’ve heard someone go, not now, mommy’s on teams. So, we do still have that happening.

Tom Temin But the government’s going to survive in this 15%, 30%, whatever hybrid mode you think.

Margie Rowe I think you will, but it all is really based on your job. You know, TSA and CBP, they have to be on the ground every day. If you’re an administrator, there’s a lot you can do from your home.

The post How Homeland Security Department’s Science and Technology Directorate is dealing with its telework-induced high-vacancy offices first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Government Accountability Office is telling Congress that agencies could save millions of dollars, by making better use of federal buildings.

GAO, in its latest report on overlapping and duplicative federal programs, states agencies could save about $100 million, if they used predictive models to make smarter decisions about deferred maintenance and repairs.

The watchdog office says the government could save even more, by setting federal building utilization benchmarks and addressing underutilized office space.

Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that predictive analytics would help agencies address a growing maintenance backlog.

“None of them were fully utilizing predictive modeling to say, ‘OK, if I make an investment here, I can save this amount of money. When’s the best time to make that investment?’” Dodaro told the subcommittee on emerging threats and spending oversight.

GAO found deferred maintenance and repairs grew from about $26 billion to nearly $49 billion between fiscal 2017 and 2022 for the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, and the departments of Interior, Energy and Health and Human Services.

The watchdog agency expects HHS, Interior and Energy would be able to save $100 million by using these predictive analytics.

GSA said its potential savings would depend on the funding it gets to start these projects — but GAO estimates the agency could reduce its backlog by at least 0.5%.

Dodaro said agencies should also do more to address underused federal building space, “in light of the new working arrangements that agencies are forging and working their way through.”

The federal government owns over 460 million square feet of office space, which costs billions of dollars annually to operate and maintain. Federal real property management has been on GAO’s High-Risk List since 2003.

GAO recommends the Office of Management and Budget, which chairs the Federal Real Property Council, should set new federal building utilization metrics that reflect a greater level of telework across the federal workforce.

“As the country emerges from the pandemic and agencies continue to offer telework as an option, the federal government has a unique opportunity to reconsider how much and what type of office space it needs,” the report states.

OMB agreed with GAO’s recommendation. It told the watchdog office in March 2024 that it created a working group to start developing those benchmarks.

GAO said setting new benchmarks would push agencies to reduce the amount of office space they occupy. It estimates agencies would save at least 1% of costs from reducing leased space, and could result in $10 million of savings over five years.

Dodaro told lawmakers “there’s not that actually that many barriers” for agencies to start right-sizing their real estate footprints.

“Right now, the agencies are all doing it differently. Most of the utilization rates apply to headquarters buildings in Washington, not the buildings throughout the country and all the different assets. And you need different rates for like laboratories, versus other kinds of facilities, so it’s not an easy job. But somebody needs to take leadership,” he said.

GAO found last summer that all agency headquarters buildings in the Washington, D.C. area had excess space, including 17 that had an average building utilization of just 25%.

The Public Buildings Reform Board, in a more recent report, found the federal headquarters buildings operated at 12% of their estimated capacity, on average, between January and September 2023.

GAO looking at telework’s impact on federal workforce

Dodaro said GAO is also looking at what impact, if any, a greater use of telework has had on customer service, recruitment and retention and mission delivery across the federal government.

“The focus Congress ought to put on this, in my opinion, is on outcomes,” Dodaro said. “Are we getting the right outcomes that we want to achieve, and not try to micromanage how that happens? But if you don’t get the right outcomes, you need to hold the agencies accountable,” he said.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told the watchdog he’s “concerned about the ability to maintain a strong and effective workforce at the federal government level, given the telework policies that we have.”

Romney and Sen. Joe Manchin recently introduced the Back to Work Act, which would require federal employees to spend 60% of their work hours in the office. The Biden administration is currently calling on agencies to bring their employees into the office at least 50% of the time.

Romney said he’s leading the bill, in response to reported customer service constituents face when interacting with federal agencies still on a hybrid work schedule.

“Had the response time been the same as before COVID, fine. But in fact, the lines are longer. People are having a harder time getting in touch with the government,” Romney said.

GAO, a legislative branch agency, codified workplace flexibilities last year that allow its employees to telework up to four days a week.

“[If] we get the right outcomes, you can have workplace flexibilities. But if we don’t get the right outcomes, we’re not going to do it. Fortunately for us, we study it and evaluate it, and our outcomes are really good. And it doesn’t matter where people are,” Dodaro said about managing GAO employees.

The Partnership for Public Services this week named GAO the top midsized agency in its Best Places to Work rankings, for the fourth year in a row.

“People aren’t smarter just because they’re sitting in a government building,” Dodaro said.  “It may be that it’s telework, or it may be they don’t have the right people in the first place — they haven’t trained them properly to answer the calls they have, they’re not holding them accountable,” Dodaro said.

Meanwhile, Dodaro said telework and workplace flexibility are key incentives to attract in-demand tech experts to government jobs.

“Right now, the struggle to get AI people — the government can’t pay the same salaries, but you can give some workplace flexibility. You can get some high-tech talent. And we’ve been able to do that at GAO — scientists, computer security people — by giving them some workplace flexibilities they can’t get anywhere else. You wouldn’t have that caliber of talent in government in case you did that.”

A White House-led, interagency AI and Tech Talent Task Force, in a report last month, said agencies have hired over 150 AI experts, and are on track to bring on at least 500 new hires before the end of fiscal 2025.

However, Dodaro said agencies are going to have difficulty making those AI hires — although their expertise is needed to get the federal government up to speed with these emerging tech tools.

“Some of the data in the government is not good at all. It’s not complete, it’s not accurate, it’s not reliable. And if it’s used for AI applications, all you’re going to get is bad outcomes faster. So the limitation of the government, because of the lack of reliable data, is enormous and should not be underestimated.”

The post Better federal building upkeep, right-sizing office space key to governmentwide savings, GAO says first appeared on Federal News Network.

“We don’t have agility that we would like to have for military construction,” Col. Jeff Hammond, the deputy commander of the Marine Corps Installations Pacific, said during the Modern Day Marine conference on Wednesday.

For instance, the service recently transitioned the 12th Marine Regiment into the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment at Camp Hansen, Okinawa, spending a sizable amount of its budget to make sure the transition happens on time since it’s a capability the service needs to have by a certain time.

“That’s not negotiable. So we’ll go down that road. But what it comes down to is it’s a sacrifice. We can do anything; we just can’t do everything. So the ruthless prioritization of funding with that [operations and maintenance] process,” said Hammond.

Rear Adm. Dean VanderLey, commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, said the biggest challenge for agile MILCON is the program budget process.

Budget submissions for all military construction projects for fiscal 2026 are due in August. It means that any project that will be included in the 2026 budget is already well underway. 

And if a new requirement comes up at any point in the coming fiscal year, the first chance to inject it into the budget will be in the 2027 budget cycle. The earliest the service can deliver a particular capability within this process would be fiscal 2029. 

“There’s nothing magic about construction for the Marine Corps that’s fundamentally different from construction in the private sector. The challenge is the program budget process,” said VanderLey.

“If you come to me today saying, ‘I need x,’ and we try to inject it in the normal MILCON process, I’m going to say, ‘I’ll get that to you by 2029.’ And most of that’s not the construction period. It’s the programming process that goes through DoD and ultimately through Congress.”

While there are emergency MILCON authorities that allow the Marine Corps to inject funds into urgent construction projects outside of the regular budgeting process, it will most likely come at the expense of other planned projects.

Within the contracting process, there are flexibilities to bypass bureaucracy and expedite project delivery, but there are trade-offs in terms of cost, schedules and capability.

For example, the Navy had a major issue with the seismic vulnerabilities in its dry docks in the Pacific Northwest, to the point where the dry docks got decertified.

Through undefinitized contract action, the service was able to complete almost $400 million worth of repairs to the dry docks in about four months.

“We put somebody on contract in a day, got them working, figured out the scope while we were doing the work, and then we’re able to definitize and then complete that very fast,” said VanderLey.

“Obviously, there’s some trade-offs there because that’s generally a fairly expensive way of doing business. But it is a way that we can do business to get that sort of resiliency.”

VanderLey said these are not necessarily ideal solutions to build truly resilient installations, but these expeditionary tools can be a way to achieve some agility within the MILCON process.

“I think we do do a good job of the being steady and stable inside the MILCON environment, but we need more authorities to be more reactive across the board,” said Brig. Gen. Jason Woodworth, the commanding general of the Marine Corps Installations West.

The post Marine Corps needs more agile MILCON process first appeared on Federal News Network.