Improving Property Management
- Improving the management of VA's vast inventory of underutilized and vacant property, including roughly 7.5 million square feet of vacant space, poses a challenge for VA.
- This challenge results, in part, from the disincentives associated with the administrative complexity and costs of disposing of federal property.
- The lengthy and complicated process required to implement leases can add to VA’s challenge.
- VA has made significant progress in cutting underutilized space (space not used to capacity) in its buildings from 15.4 million square feet in fiscal year 2005 to 5.6 million square feet in fiscal year 2007, and although the number of its vacant buildings decreased, the amount of its vacant space remained relatively unchanged at 7.5 million square feet.
- VA does not track the cost of operating underutilized and vacant space; however, GAO estimated that VA spent $175 million in fiscal year 2007 for this purpose.
- VA's use of various legal authorities, such as enhanced-use leases and sharing agreements, likely contributed to the overall reduction of underutilized space, but VA does not track the effect of these authorities. The lack of building-level information about the extent to which these authorities reduce underutilized or vacant space or provide benefits such as revenues or services to veterans means that VA cannot track, monitor, or evaluate their impact or determine which authorities have the greatest effect from year to year.
^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done
- To provide an accurate picture of its spending on unneeded property, VA needs to develop a comprehensive, accurate, well-documented, and credible annual cost estimate of maintaining underutilized and vacant property.
Highlights of GAO-08-939 (PDF)
- To provide VA with a better understanding of the overall effect of various efforts on its underutilized and vacant property, and to identify properties for disposal, VA needs to collect and maintain building-level data by fiscal year and track square footage reductions and financial and nonfinancial benefits when recording new agreements.
Highlights of GAO-08-939 (PDF)
^ Back to topKey Reports
- Federal Real Property: Progress Made in Reducing Unneeded Property, but VA Needs Better Information to Make Further Reductions
- GAO-08-939, September 10, 2008
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 77 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
- VA Health Care: Additional Efforts to Better Assess Joint Ventures Needed
- GAO-08-399, March 28, 2008
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 48 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
- VA Health Care: VA Should Better Monitor Implementation and Impact of Capital Asset Alignment Decisions
- GAO-07-408, March 21, 2007
- Summary (HTML) Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 57 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)
