Homeland Security: Ongoing Challenges Impact the Federal Protective Service's Ability to Protect Federal Facilities
Published: 2010-03-16T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: Why GAO Did This Study
paragraphs: Recent events including last month's attack on Internal Revenue Service offices in Texas, and the January 2010 shooting in the lobby of the Nevada, federal courthouse demonstrate the continued vulnerability of federal facilities and the safety of the federal employees who occupy them. These events also highlight the continued challenges involved in protecting federal real property and reiterate the importance of protecting the over 1 million government employees, as well as members of the public, who work in and visit the nearly 9,000 federal facilities. This testimony is based on past GAO reports and testimonies and discusses challenges Federal Protective Service (FPS) faces in protecting federal facilities and tenant agencies' perspective of FPS's services. To perform this work, GAO visited a number of federal facilities, surveyed tenant agencies, analyzed documents, and interviewed officials from several federal agencies.
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: Over the past 5 years GAO has reported that FPS faces a number of operational challenges protecting federal facilities, including: (1) FPS's ability to manage risk across federal facilities and implement security countermeasures is limited. FPS assesses risk and recommends countermeasures to the General Services Administration (GSA) and its tenant agencies, however decisions to implement these countermeasures are the responsibility of GSA and tenant agencies who have at times been unwilling to fund the countermeasures. Additionally, FPS takes a building-by-building approach to risk management, rather than taking a more comprehensive, strategic approach and assessing risks among all buildings in GSA's inventory and recommending countermeasure priorities to GSA and tenant agencies. (2) FPS has experienced difficulty ensuring that it has sufficient staff and its inspector-based workforce approach raises questions about protection of federal facilities. While FPS is currently operating at its congressionally mandated staffing level of no fewer than 1,200 full-time employees, FPS has experienced difficulty determining its optimal staffing level to protect federal facilities. Additionally, until recently FPS's staff was steadily declining and as a result critical law enforcement services have been reduced or eliminated. (3) FPS does not fully ensure that its contract security guards have the training and certifications required to be deployed to a federal facility. GAO found that FPS guards had not received adequate training to conduct their responsibilities. Specifically, some guards were not provided building-specific training, such as what actions to take during a building evacuation or a building emergency. This lack of training may have contributed to several incidents where guards neglected their assigned responsibilities. GSA has not been satisfied with FPS's performance, and some tenant agencies are unclear on FPS's role in protecting federal facilities. According to GSA, FPS has not been responsive and timely in providing security assessments for new leases. About one-third of FPS's customers could not comment on FPS's level of communication on various topics including security assessments, a response that suggests that the division of roles and responsibilities between FPS and its customers is unclear. FPS is taking some steps to better protect federal facilities. For example, FPS is developing a new risk assessment program and has recently focused on improving oversight of its contract guard program.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: We are pleased to be here to discuss the challenges the Federal Protective  Service (FPS) faces and tenant agencies’ perspective of the services FPS  provides in protecting more than 1 million government employees, as well  as members of the public, who work in and visit the nearly 9,000 federal  facilities that are under the control and custody of the General Services  Administration (GSA). While there has not been a large-scale terrorist  attack on a domestic federal facility since the terrorist attacks of  September 11, 2001, and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal  Building in Oklahoma City, recent events including last month’s attack on  Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin, Texas, and the January 2010  shooting in the lobby of the Las Vegas, Nevada, federal courthouse  demonstrate the continued vulnerability of federal facilities and the need  to ensure the safety of the federal employees who occupy them. These  recent events also continue to demonstrate the challenges involved in  protecting federal real property and are part of the reason GAO has  designated federal real property management as a high-risk area.
FPS—located within the National Protection and Programs Directorate  (NPPD) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—is responsible  for protecting the buildings, grounds, and property that are under the  control and custody of GSA, as well as the persons on that property;  authorized to enforce federal laws and regulations aimed at protecting  GSA buildings and persons on the property; and authorized to investigate  offenses against these buildings and persons. FPS conducts its mission by  providing security services through two types of activities: (1) physical  security activities, including conducting risk assessments of facilities and  recommending countermeasures, aimed at preventing incidents at  facilities and (2) law enforcement activities, including proactively  patrolling facilities, responding to incidents, conducting criminal  investigations, and exercising arrest authority. To accomplish its mission,  FPS currently has a budget of around $1 billion, about 1,225 full-time  employees, and about 15,000 contract guards deployed at federal facilities  across the country.
subsections: section_title: FPS Faces Challenges in Protecting Federal Facilities
subsections: section_title: FPS’s Ability to Manage Risk Across Facilities and Implement Security Countermeasures Is Limited
paragraphs: FPS assesses risk and recommends countermeasures to GSA and tenant  agencies; however, FPS’s ability to use risk management to influence the  allocation of resources is limited because resource allocation decisions  are the responsibility of GSA and tenant agencies—in the form of Facility  Security Committees (FSC)—who have at times been unwilling to fund the  countermeasures FPS recommends. We have found that, under the current  risk management approach, the security equipment that FPS recommends  and is responsible for acquiring, installing, and maintaining may not be  implemented for several reasons including the following:  tenant agencies may not have the security expertise needed to make risk- based decisions, tenant agencies may find the associated costs prohibitive, the timing of the assessment process may be inconsistent with tenant  agencies’ budget cycles,   consensus may be difficult to build amount multiple tenant agencies, or  tenant agencies may lack a complete understanding of why recommended  countermeasures are necessary because they do not receive security  assessments in their entirety.
For example, in August 2007, FPS recommended a security equipment  countermeasure—the upgrade of a surveillance system shared by two  high-security locations that, according to FPS officials, would cost around  $650,000. While members of one FSC told us they approved spending  between $350,000 and $375,000 to fund their agencies’ share of the  countermeasure, they said that the FSC of the other location would not  approve funding; therefore, FPS could not upgrade the system as it had  recommended. In November 2008, FPS officials told us that they were  moving ahead with the project by drawing on unexpended revenues from  the two locations’ building-specific fees as well as the funding that was  approved by one of the FSCs. Furthermore, FPS officials, in May 2009, told  us that all cameras had been repaired, and all monitoring and recording  devices had been replaced, and that the two FSCs had approved additional  upgrades, which FPS was implementing. As we reported in June 2008, we  have found other instances in which recommended security  countermeasures were not implemented at some of the buildings we  visited because FSC members could not agree on which countermeasures  to implement or were unable to obtain funding from their agencies.  Currently no guidelines exist outlining the requirements for FSCs  including their composition, requirements, and relationship with FPS. The  Interagency Security Committee (ISC), which is chaired within NPPD,  recently began to develop guidance for FSC operations, which may  address some of these issues. The ISC, however, has yet to announce an  anticipated date for issuance of this guidance.
Compounding this situation, FPS takes a building-by-building approach to  risk management, using an outdated risk assessment tool to create facility  security assessments (FSA), rather than taking a more comprehensive,  strategic approach and assessing risks among all buildings in GSA’s  inventory and recommending countermeasure priorities to GSA and tenant  agencies. As a result, the current approach provides less assurance that  the most critical risks at federal buildings across the country are being  prioritized and mitigated. Also, GSA and tenant agencies have concerns  about the quality and timeliness of FPS’s risk assessment services and are  taking steps to obtain their own risk assessments. For example, GSA  officials told us they have had difficulties receiving timely risk  assessments from FPS for space GSA is considering leasing. These risk  assessments must be completed before GSA can take possession of the  property and lease it to tenant agencies. An inefficient risk assessment  process for new lease projects can add to costs for GSA and create  problems for both GSA and tenant agencies that have been planning for a  move. Therefore, GSA is updating a risk assessment tool that it began  developing in 1998, but has not recently used, to better ensure the  timeliness and comprehensiveness of these risk assessments. GSA officials  told us that, in the future, they may use this tool for other physical security  activities, such as conducting other types of risk assessments and  determining security countermeasures for new facilities. Additionally,  although tenant agencies have typically taken responsibility for assessing  risk and securing the interior of their buildings, assessing exterior risks  requires additional expertise and resources. This is an inefficient approach  considering that tenant agencies are paying FPS to assess building  security.
section_title: FPS Has Experienced Difficulty Ensuring That It Has Sufficient Staff, and Its Inspector-Based Workforce Approach Raises Questions About Protection of Federal Facilities
paragraphs: While FPS is currently operating at its congressionally mandated staffing  level of no fewer than 1,200 full-time employees, FPS has experienced  difficulty determining its optimal staffing level to protect federal facilities.  Prior to this mandate, FPS’s staff was steadily declining and, as a result,  critical law enforcement services have been reduced or eliminated. For  example, FPS has largely eliminated its use of proactive patrol to prevent  or detect criminal violations at many GSA buildings. According to some  FPS officials at regions we visited, not providing proactive patrol has  limited its law enforcement personnel to a reactive force. Additionally,  officials stated that, in the past, proactive patrol permitted its police  officers and inspectors to identify and apprehend individuals that were  surveilling GSA buildings. In contrast, when FPS is not able to patrol  federal buildings, there is increased potential for illegal entry and other  criminal activity. In one city we visited, a deceased individual had been  found in a vacant GSA facility that was not regularly patrolled by FPS. FPS  officials stated that the deceased individual had been inside the building  for approximately 3 months.
In addition to the elimination of proactive patrol, many FPS regions have  reduced their hours of operation for providing law enforcement services in  multiple locations, which has resulted in a lack of coverage when most  federal employees are either entering or leaving federal buildings or on  weekends when some facilities remain open to the public. Moreover, some  FPS police officers and inspectors also said that reducing hours has  increased their response times in some locations by as much as a few  hours to a couple of days, depending on the location of the incident. The  decrease in FPS’s duty hours has also jeopardized police officer and  inspector safety, as well as building security. Some inspectors said that  they are frequently in dangerous situations without any FPS backup  because many regions have reduced their hours of operations and  overtime.
In 2008, FPS transitioned to an inspector-based workforce—eliminating  the police officer position—and is relying primarily on FPS inspectors for  both law enforcement and physical security activities, which has  hampered its ability to protect federal facilities. FPS believes that an  inspector-based workforce approach ensures that its staff has the right  mix of technical skills and training needed to accomplish its mission.  However, FPS’s ability to provide law enforcement services under its  inspector-based workforce approach may be diminished because FPS  relies on its inspectors to provide both law enforcement and physical  security services simultaneously. This approach has contributed to a  number of issues. For example, FPS faces difficulty ensuring the quality  and timeliness of FSAs and adequate oversight of its 15,000 contract  security guards. In addition, in our 2008 report, we found that  representatives of several local law enforcement agencies we visited were  unaware of FPS’s transition to an inspector-based workforce and stated  that their agencies did not have the capacity to take on the additional job  of responding to incidents at federal facilities. In April 2007, a DHS official  and several FPS inspectors testified before Congress that FPS’s inspector- based workforce approach requires increased reliance on state and local  law enforcement agencies for assistance with crime and other incidents at  GSA facilities and that FPS would seek to enter into memorandums of  agreement (MOA) with local law enforcement agencies. However,  according to FPS’s Director, the agency decided not to pursue MOA with  local law enforcement officials, in part because of reluctance on the part  of local law enforcement officials to sign such MOAs. In addition, FPS  believes that the MOAs are not necessary because 96 percent of the  properties in its inventory are listed as concurrent jurisdiction facilities  where both federal and state governments have jurisdiction over the  property. Nevertheless, these MOAs would clarify roles and  responsibilities of local law enforcement agencies when responding to  crime or other incidents.
section_title: Insufficient Oversight and Inadequate Training of Contract Guards Has Hampered FPS’s Protection of Federal Facilities
paragraphs: FPS does not fully ensure that its contract security guards have the  training and certifications required to be deployed to a GSA building. FPS  maintains a contract security guard force of about 15,000 guards that are  primarily responsible for controlling access to federal facilities by (1)  checking the identification of government employees, as well as members  of the public who work in and visit federal facilities and (2) operating  security equipment, including X-ray machines and magnetometers, to  screen for prohibited materials such as firearms, knives, explosives, or  items intended to be used to fabricate an explosive or incendiary device.   We reported in July 2009, that 411 of the 663 guards (62 percent) employed  by seven FPS contractors and deployed to federal facilities had at least  one expired certification, including a declaration that the guards have not  been convicted of domestic violence, which makes them ineligible to carry  firearms.
We also reported in July 2009, that FPS guards had not received adequate  training to conduct their responsibilities. FPS requires that all prospective  guards complete about 128 hours of training including 16 hours of X-ray  and magnetometer training. However, in one region, FPS has not provided  the X-ray or magnetometer training to its 1,500 guards since 2004.  Nonetheless, these guards are assigned to posts at GSA buildings. X-ray  training is critical because guards control access points at buildings. In  addition, we also found that some guards were not provided building- specific training, such as what actions to take during a building evacuation  or a building emergency. This lack of training may have contributed to  several incidents where guards neglected their assigned responsibilities.  Following are some examples:    at a level IV facility, the guards did not follow evacuation procedures and  left two access points unattended, thereby leaving the facility vulnerable;    at a level IV facility, the guard allowed employees to enter the building  while an incident involving suspicious packages was being investigated;  and   at a level III facility, the guard allowed employees to access the area  affected by a suspicious package; this area was required to be evacuated.
We also found that FPS has limited assurance that its guards are  complying with post orders. In July 2009, we reported that FPS does not  have specific national guidance on when and how guard inspections  should be performed. Consequently, inspections of guard posts in 6 of the  11 regions we visited were inconsistent and varied in quality. We also  found that guard inspections in the 6 regions we visited are typically  completed by FPS during regular business hours and in locations where  FPS has a field office and seldom at nights or on weekends or in  nonmetropolitan areas. For example, in 2008, tenants in a level IV federal  facility in a nonmetropolitan area complained to a GSA property manager  that they had not seen FPS in over 2 years, there was no management of  their guards, and the number of incidents at their facility was increasing.  GSA officials contacted FPS officials and requested FPS to send inspectors  to the facility to address the problems. Most guards are also stationed at  fixed posts that they are not permitted to leave, which can impact their  response to incidents. For example, we interviewed over 50 guards and  asked them whether they would assist an FPS inspector chasing an  individual in handcuffs escaping a federal facility. The guards’ responses  varied, and some guards stated they would likely do nothing and stay at  their posts because they feared being fired for leaving. Other guards also  told us that they would not intervene because of the threat of a liability  suit for use of force and did not want to risk losing their jobs. Additionally,  guards do not have arrest authority, although contract guards do have  authority to detain individuals. However, according to some regional  officials, contract guards do not exercise their detention authority also  because of liability concerns.
section_title: GSA Has Not Been Satisfied With FPS’s Performance and Some Tenant Agencies Are Unclear On FPS’s Role In Protecting Federal Facilities
paragraphs: We found that GSA—the owner and lessee of many FPS protected  facilities—has not been satisfied with the level of service FPS has  provided since FPS transferred to DHS. For example, according to GSA  officials, FPS has not been responsive and timely in providing assessments  for new leases. GSA officials in one region told us that the quality of the  assessments differs depending on the individual conducting the  assessment.  This official added that different inspectors will conduct  assessments for the same building so there is rarely consistency from year  to year, and often inspectors do not seem to be able to fully explain the  countermeasures that they are recommending.  We believe that FPS and  GSA’s information sharing and coordination challenges are primarily a  result of not finalizing a new MOA that formalizes their roles and  responsibilities. According to GSA officials, in November 2009, the two  agencies have met to start working through the MOA section by section,  and as of early March 2010 they have had four working group sessions and  are anticipating an initial agreed upon draft in late spring 2010. In the  absence of a clearly defined and enforced MOA, FPS officials told us they  feel they are limited in their ability to protect GSA properties.
Additionally, in 2009, we reported that tenant agencies have mixed views  about some of the services they pay FPS to provide. For example,  according to our generalizable survey of tenant agencies,   About 82 percent of FPS’s customers indicated they do not use FPS as  their primary law enforcement agency in emergency situations, and said  they primarily rely on other agencies such as local law enforcement, the  U.S. Marshals Service, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation; 18 percent  rely on FPS.
About one-third of FPS’s customers indicated that they were satisfied with  FPS’s level of communication, one-third were neutral or dissatisfied, while  the remaining one-third could not comment on how satisfied or  dissatisfied they were with FPS’s level of communication on various topics  including building security assessments, threats to their facility, and  security guidance This response that suggests that the division of roles and  responsibilities between FPS and its customers is unclear.
Our survey also suggests that this lack of clarity is partly due to the little  or no interaction customers have with FPS officers.  Examples are as  follows:    A respondent in a leased facility commented that FPS has very limited  resources, and the resources that are available are assigned to the primary  federally owned building in the region.
A respondent remembered only one visit from an FPS officer in the last 12  years.
section_title: FPS Is Taking Steps to Better Protect Federal Facilities
paragraphs: Over the past 5 years, we have conducted a body of work reviewing the  operations of FPS and its ability to adequately protect federal facilities and  we have made numerous recommendations to address these challenges.  For example, we recommended FPS improve its effective long-term  human capital planning, clarify roles and responsibilities of local law  enforcement agencies in regard to responding to incidents at GSA  facilities, develop and implement performance measures in various  aspects of its operations, and improve its data collection and quality  across its operations. While FPS has generally agreed with all of our  recommendations, it has not completed many related corrective actions.
At the request of Congress we are in the process of evaluating some of  FPS’s most recent actions. For example, FPS is developing the Risk  Assessment and Management Program (RAMP), which could enhance its  approach to assessing risk, managing human capital, and measuring  performance. With regard to improving the effectiveness of FPS’s risk  management approach and the quality of FSAs, FPS believes RAMP will  provide inspectors with the information needed to make more informed  and defensible recommendations for security countermeasures. FPS also  anticipates that RAMP will allow inspectors to obtain information from  one electronic source, generate reports automatically, track selected  countermeasures throughout their life cycle, and address some concerns  about the subjectivity inherent in FSAs.
In response to our July 2009 testimony, FPS took a number of immediate  actions with respect to contract guard management. For example, the  Director of FPS instructed Regional Directors to accelerate the  implementation of FPS’s requirement that two guard posts at Level IV  facilities be inspected weekly. FPS also required more X-ray and  magnetometer training for inspectors and guards.
To improve its coordination with GSA, the FPS Director and the Director  of GSA’s Public Buildings Service Building Security and Policy Division  participate in an ISC executive steering committee, which sets the  committee’s priorities and agendas for ISC’s quarterly meetings.   Additionally, FPS and GSA have established an Executive Advisory  Council to enhance the coordination and communication of security  strategies, policies, guidance, and activities with tenant agencies in GSA  buildings. This council could enhance communication and coordination  between FPS and GSA, and provide a vehicle for FPS, GSA, and tenant  agencies to work together to identify common problems and devise  solutions.
We plan to provide Congress with our final reports on FPS’s oversight of  its contract guard program and our other ongoing FPS work later this year.
Mr. Chairman, this completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to  respond to any questions you or other members of the committee may  have at this time.
section_title: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgement
paragraphs: For further information on this testimony, please contact me at (202) 512- 2834 or by e-mail at goldsteinm@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of  Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page  of this statement.  Individuals making key contributions to this testimony  include Tammy Conquest, Assistant Director; Tida Barakat; Jonathan  Carver; Delwen Jones; and Susan Michal-Smith.
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