Most Federal Agencies Are Using Less Than 25% of Office Space

​Longstanding poor management and inconsistent policies are plaguing the federal government’s 24 agency buildings, with 17 of those properties currently using 25% of their capacity.

This capacity was measured during a three-week sample period across January, February, and March of 2023. On the higher range, agencies used an estimated 39 to 49 percent of the capacity of their headquarters on average, according to a new report from GAO.

GAO found that federal agencies “have long struggled to determine how much office space they needed to fulfill their missions efficiently.”

Failure to address this waste has extended to 20 years, as retaining excess and underutilized space is one of the main reasons that federal real property management has remained on GAO’s High-Risk List since 2003.

The lack of consistent standards for how agencies should measure utilization or what is considered full utilization for the approximate 511 million square feet of federal office space made maximizing space challenging and has deterred action, agency officials said.

Lately, the pandemic and remote work has exacerbated the situation. For example, one agency official said the biggest challenge to improving utilization was uncertainty about measuring utilization in a high telework environment.

In testimony before Congress, David Marroni, GAO’s acting director of the Physical Infrastructure Team noted that while all agencies have resumed in-person operations, the federal workplace has evolved as agencies have embraced hybrid and remote office environments.

“This moment presents a unique opportunity to reconsider various aspects of the federal government’s real property portfolio and how best to align the portfolio with future needs,” Marroni said.

Three primary causes for the low space utilization in federal headquarters buildings are that excess space is a longstanding challenge; building configurations do not support a modern workplace; and agencies have embraced remote work.

Marroni noted that, currently, each agency establishes its own measures and standards for office space utilization.

“We found that agencies use a mix of badge swipes, network logins, self-reporting, or guard tracking to measure attendance at their headquarters,” he testified.

These differences feed into additional differences in how agencies measure building capacity, he said.

“Not all agencies agreed with our approach to measuring utilization because they use different metrics for office space planning,” Marroni added.

“For example, some agencies attribute a certain square footage per staff person, while others count physical workspaces.”

Agency officials questioned if pursuing 100 percent utilization based on attendance made sense due to likely fluctuations in daily attendance, according to the testimony.

Furthering the inactive quagmire, agency officials also said that they have not yet developed new utilization metrics to respond to the rise of hybrid. “One agency official said that a lack of standard methods and measurements can allow agencies to remain in a wait-and-see mode until there was consensus on how to proceed,” Marroni shared.

“In conclusion, the pandemic has lowered the utilization of headquarters office space and may have added to the amount of unneeded space that existed prior to the pandemic.”

The report also noted that underutilized office space has financial and environmental costs.

Federal agencies spend about $2 billion a year to operate and maintain federal office buildings regardless of the buildings’ utilization. In addition, agencies spend about $5 billion annually to lease office buildings, GAO said.

In addition, office buildings’ environmental costs could be lowered with better utilization. For  example, GSA renovated and reduced its current agency real estate footprint, which helped reduce energy consumption and costs.

Agency real property officials identified challenges to increasing their headquarters building utilization. Among their solutions is: Spend more money.

“Additional budget resources are needed to reconfigure existing space to increase utilization and support a hybrid work environment,” according to the report.

Additionally, concerns about the future of in-office attendance policies and habits have caused a reluctance to reduce headquarters space.

Office politics is another sticking point. Agency leaders can be reluctant to share headquarters space among inner-agency components or other agencies, the report said.