From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Federal government must cure its edifice complex   
   by Editorial Board, Washington Examiner, July 26, 2023    
      
   The federal government seems incapable of managing anything well, so it can be   
   no surprise that it is incompetent when it tries to manage office space. Even   
   so, a report this month from the Government Accountability Office is startling   
   and ought to spur    
   real reforms.   
      
   The GAO says federal agencies spend $7 billion a year to maintain federal   
   office buildings of 511 million square feet of space, or to lease office space   
   from others. Yet much of this office space stands empty. “Seventeen of the   
   24 federal agencies in    
   GAO's review used an estimated average 25 percent or less of their   
   headquarters buildings' capacity,” reported GAO. Even those agencies that   
   were most efficient left between 51% and 61% of their space unused.   
      
   This costs taxpayers directly and, probably, indirectly involves much   
   unnecessary energy consumption, amongst other things. Likely indirect costs   
   not specifically discussed by the GAO, but inferable from its report include   
   those stemming from a workforce    
   so spread out that there is no “eyeball accountability,” meaning workers   
   can slack off without anyone noticing. This means wasteful spending and poor   
   service are additional costs of a workforce already enjoying so many civil   
   service protections that    
   good managers find it impossible to fire even the worst and most deadbeat   
   among them.   
      
   The GAO also reports that “underutilized federal office space involves   
   opportunity costs…, In the local economy, unneeded federal properties and   
   land could be put to productive use…. selling a federal building to the   
   private sector increases the    
   local tax base, as federal buildings are generally exempt from local taxes.”   
      
   Part of the problem, the GAO says, is longstanding mismanagement that long   
   preceded telecommuting: “We calculated that for one of the headquarters…,   
   that if all assigned staff entered the building on a single day, it would   
   still only use 67% of....   
   capacity.” The problem got monumentally worse when agencies began allowing   
   off-site work during the pandemic. Now, with the pandemic over, “all 24   
   agencies said that their in-office workforce has not returned to pre-pandemic   
   levels due to increased    
   use of telework and remote work.”   
      
   The Federal Property Management Reform Act of 2016 was supposed fix this   
   problem by fording the federal government to cut unused space. But the last   
   has been ignored. The solutions should be two-fold. First, all agencies should   
   reduce remote work so    
   workers return for several days a week, which encourages esprit de corps and   
   lets supervisors supervise. With staffs on site, it will be easier to figure   
   how much space is needed, and how much can be consolidated and relinquished.   
      
   Second, underutilized buildings should be sold, workforces moved into unused   
   spaces in other buildings, and leases canceled a rented spaces. Congress   
   should downsize the bloated federal bureaucracy anyway, making even less   
   office space necessary. The    
   nation’s beleaguered taxpayers would welcome this.   
      
   https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/federal-go   
   ernment-must-cure-its-edifice-complex   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)