GAO’s Real Property Challenge: Mission Possible?

Is the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking real property professionals to solve a problem that can’t be fixed without the help of lawmakers on Capitol Hill?

In a January 2007 update, GAO chose to keep federal real property on its High-Risk Series. GAO expressed concern that “deep-rooted obstacles” stand in the way of successful transformation of federal real property processes. The updated document advised that “the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and agencies, through the Federal Real Property Council, will need to focus on developing strategies” regarding these obstacles.

The question is whether OMB and the FRPC actually have the power or authority to do anything more than suggest changes to the process.

The reason? Consider GAO’s list of “deep-rooted obstacles.” These include “competing stakeholder interests, legal and budgetary limitations, and the need for improved capital planning.”

Certainly, managing competing stakeholder interests and improving capital planning are possible for OMB and FRPC to influence. Those obstacles are, by and large, a matter of educating agency leadership on the need to fully integrate real property with mission and financial decisions at the earliest possible stages.

Some organizations already understand this connection. Carolyn Austin-Diggs, the Director, Office of Asset Management for the Department of the Treasury, stresses the need for an agency’s Senior Real Property Officer (SRPO) to be “proactively involved in the capital planning investment and Office of Management and Budget processes for real property.”

According to Austin-Diggs, who is Treasury’s SRPO, an agency’s real property program must be integrated with the work of chief financial officers, chief information technology officers, and human capital officers if real property asset management is to improve. (For more of Ms. Austin-Diggs’ views, see her “Executive to Executive” interview.)

But what of the “legal and budgetary limitations” that GAO expects OMB and agencies to address?

The Federal Real Property Association has determined in two consecutive annual surveys that real property professionals have insufficient funding to implement sweeping changes in management of real property. The GAO itself says that while “agencies have made progress in collecting real property data, data reliability is still a challenge at DOD and other agencies.”

Unfortunately, improving data reliability means investing money in the inventory, and authenticating and validating that data to the constructed asset level. Continuing budgetary restrictions across all government agencies means that data can only be improved by robbing Peter to pay Paul – sacrificing the complete funding of one mission objective to partially fund another.

Even more importantly, what can OMB or the FRPC hope to accomplish in addressing the “legal limitations” that GAO identifies as deep-rooted obstacles to success? Bluntly put, neither OMB nor the FRPC has any power to enact or change legislation. That is solely the purview of the legislative branch of government. OMB can issue regulations, and the FRPC can create criteria to measure compliance, but only Congress can remove legislative obstacles – or institute legal remedies.

At this writing, HR 3134 remains Congress’s only effort to remove impediments to funding improved real property asset management. This proposed pilot legislation, which would have returned some of the proceeds from disposition of surplus real property assets to affected agencies, is in a state of limbo. Whether the 110th Congress will take up HR3134 at all is unknown.

Without the help of Congress to alleviate the legislative and budgetary problems that keep it on the GAO’s High-Risk list, real property asset management is an unsolvable puzzle. Like the mythical snake eating its own tail, it is destined to become a cyclical process that constantly renews itself without ever coming to an end.


David Baxa
President and CEO
VISTA