On Thursday, July 13, 2023, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a federal real property report titled, “Preliminary Results Show Federal Buildings Remain Underutilized Due to Longstanding Challenges and Increased Telework,” which included preliminary findings on the rate of utilization of federal agency buildings. You can view the report here. GAO conducted this report after recognizing that “the federal government has a unique opportunity to reconsider how much and what type of office space it needs.”

The GAO introduces their findings early in the report, stating that 17 of the 24 agencies involved in the study use, on average, 25% or less of their headquarters capacity at any one time, and the highest percentage of utilization in the report was 49%. The report describes utilization as “a ratio of a building’s capacity and the extent to which an agency uses that capacity.” The report also outlines the yearly costs associated with these office buildings, including about $2 billion a year on operations and maintenance, and $5 billion a year on building leases.

In the report, participating agencies cited potential challenges to improving headquarters utilization, including budget resources for reconfiguring outdated spaces, concerns about future policy changes regarding remote work, reluctance to transitioning towards shared spaces between agencies, and a lack of standardization across the board in a final target of utilization.

The GAO confirms that, while this issue of underutilization has always existed, the pandemic has exacerbated this issue, and even as in-person work resumes, federal agencies should take this opportunity to embrace hybrid work environments and remote work, in an attempt to revise the federal government’s real property portfolio.