General Services Administration

In the wake of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, the President directed federal agencies to upgrade the security of their buildings. The President gave the General Services Administration (GSA) responsibility for the buildings under its control, and GSA began a multimillion-dollar security enhancement program. GAO found that GSA has made progress in implementing GAO's recommendations. GSA told its regions to reassess the security of all of the buildings in its inventory by April 1999 (1) to ensure that all of its buildings have been assessed and meet the Justice Department's minimum security standards and (2) to determine whether the security upgrade information was correctly represented in both the upgrade tracking system and the accounting system. GSA completed negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget and, as a result, has a way to recoup more of its building security costs. GSA, however, still lacks completely accurate data in its upgrade tracking and accounting systems and has not finished developing outcome-oriented goals and measures for its building security program. GSA decided on a new risk assessment methodology and is now evaluating how to implement the methodology in future building security surveys. Finally, GSA's recent reassessment of each building was to mark the restart of the routine physical security surveys that were suspended because of a lack of sufficient personnel after the Oklahoma City bombing.

GAO noted that: (1) GSA directed its regions to reassess the security of all the buildings in its inventory by April 1, 1999, for two purposes: (a) to ensure that all of its buildings have been assessed and meet the Department of Justice minimum standards for security; and (b) to determine whether the security upgrade information for each building was correctly represented in both the upgrade tracking system and the accounting system; (2) GSA completed negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget and, as a result, has a means of recouping more of its building security costs; (3) GSA, however, still lacks completely accurate data in its upgrade tracking and accounting systems and has not completed development of outcome-oriented goals and measures for its building security program; (4) GSA decided on a new risk assessment methodology and is in the process of evaluating how to implement the methodology in future building security surveys; and (5) GSA's recent reassessment of each building was to mark the restart of the routine physical security surveys that were suspended because of a lack of sufficient personnel after the Oklahoma City bombing.