The General Services Administration's Program To Delegate Real Property Operations to Selected Tenant Agencies

GAO discussed the General Services Administration's (GSA) pilot delegations program, which transfers the responsibility for performing various building and real property management functions to the tenant agencies. In the initial program, GSA selected five agencies to operate their Washington, D.C. headquarters buildings so that it could determine whether: (1) the delegations were feasible and cost-effective; and (2) it should expand the program to include other GSA-owned buildings. GSA then expanded to a total of 10 agencies and 24 buildings. Although GSA reported that the agencies operated the buildings in a satisfactory manner and that their costs were consistent with its costs, it found that there were substantial problems in operations and maintenance, cleaning, contract administration, and the protection of its proprietary interests in the delegated buildings. After the deficiencies were corrected, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) decided to expand and accelerate the program on the basis of the data produced after the initial program. GSA has developed a standard delegation agreement which specifies GSA and agency responsibilities for delegating functions in the buildings; however, it continues to budget for the full costs of real property operations for all federal buildings. OMB directed that the agencies with delegated buildings continue to include the full standard-level user charges in their budgets and that GSA rebate the portion representing what it estimated it would have spent on those buildings. Since OMB decided to expand delegations on a mandatory rather than a voluntary basis, questions have been raised about the cost of delegations and the capability of tenant agencies and GSA to function effectively in the program.