In 2004, the President issued Executive Order 13327 establishing the FRPC, composed of senior federal real property managers, and representatives from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration (GSA), among others. The executive order required FRPC to work with GSA to establish and maintain a single, comprehensive database describing the nature, use, and extent of all real property under the custody and control of executive branch agencies, except when otherwise required for reasons of national security. To meet this requirement, GSA in coordination with FRPC established the FRPP and provides guidance to agencies about how to annually report real property under the custody and control of executive branch agencies in three categories: land, buildings, and structures. Agencies are required to annually submit 23 separate data elements to FRPP for all of their structures. The data elements include basic inventory data (type, use, size, and location) and other elements (condition, replacement value, operating costs, congressional district, and historical status). Some of the FRPP data elements differ for structures as compared with the data for buildings or land. For example, for measures of size, which are standard square feet for buildings or acres for land, agencies should report a unit of measure based on the type of structure (such as linear feet for canals or lane miles or square yards for roads and bridges). The FRPC also made some changes to the fiscal year 2013 FRPP guidance related to how agencies collect and report data for structures. For example, the FRPP will no longer contain information on mission dependency, will add a new field for repair needs, and will automatically calculate the condition index using the replacement value field and the newly created repair needs field. As we stated in the 2013 update to the High-Risk Series, although some progress has been made in obtaining data about federal real property, the government still continues to lack consistent, accurate, and useful data that could support strategic decision-making about federal real property. Internal control standards for federal executive branch agencies require that agencies have relevant, reliable, and timely information for decision- making and external-reporting purposes. OMB guidelines state that agencies should develop detailed guidance necessary for producing quality data. Among other things, OMB’s definition of quality ensures that accurate, reliable, and unbiased information is presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner. These guidelines state that agencies should treat information quality as integral to every step in the creation of that information, from creation, collection, maintenance, and dissemination. We have also found that consistency means that the data are sufficiently clear and well-defined to yield similar results in similar situations. The Government Accountability and Transparency Board, established in 2011 to provide strategic direction for enhancing transparency of federal spending data, found that lack of consistent data creates obstacles to transparency and accountability. In addition, it determined that consistent data promote more accurate and comparable data for improved reporting and decision-making. However, we also found in 2012 that collecting and analyzing data creates costs for federal agencies as they must direct time and staff resources to this task and emphasized the importance of limiting the number of measures to the vital few measures considered essential for producing data for decision- making. In the fiscal year 2012 FRPP, federal agencies reported that they were responsible for over 480,000 structures. Of the nearly 176,000 structures that federal civilian agencies were responsible for, about 98 percent were owned by the federal government and about 2 percent were leased. The five agencies we selected for our review were responsible for 83 percent of civilian federal structures. The FRPP categorizes structures into 22 different types. The most commonly reported type was roads and bridges followed by recreational structures, which include outdoor recreational structures such as athletic fields and courts, stadiums, golf courses, and ski slopes.structures as reported by federal civilian agencies. Agencies take different approaches to defining and inventorying structures making the aggregation of data in the FRPP’s database unreliable. Agencies we reviewed defined structures differently leading to inconsistencies as to what assets are included in the FRPP, including counting some building-like facilities as structures. We also found that the agencies we reviewed counted structures differently, provided inaccurate location information, and categorized their structures inconsistently, all of which limits the usefulness of their data on structures in the FRPP. Additionally, the agencies we reviewed submitted outdated or incorrect information for key data elements, such as the replacement value, annual operating costs, and condition. GSA officials that manage FRPP said that FRPC chose to provide flexibility in the reporting guidance to account for the wide diversity in federal structures, but the FRPP also aggregates the data as if they were comparable. Even if this data were useful, FRPC reports very little of what it collects from agencies and officials at GSA told us that there is low interest in and demand for information on structures, a situation that creates few incentives to improve data reliability. In addition, OMB officials stated that their focus in recent years has been primarily on buildings relative to structures. In prior reports, we have stressed the importance of limiting the number of elements to the vital few that are considered essential for producing data for decision making in light of the costs of collecting this data. Agencies we reviewed defined a structure differently when inventorying their assets. Differing definitions resulted in inconsistent data as different types of assets were being labeled as structures across agencies (see table 2). Two of the agencies we reviewed—USDA and DOE—did not develop a standard definition for a structure. OMB guidelines state that agencies should develop detailed guidance necessary for producing reliable, consistent data. GSA real property officials responsible for the FRPP stated that they, in coordination with FRPC, chose to give agencies the flexibility to define structures themselves and that FRPP guidance, therefore, does not define a structure. For the agencies we reviewed, these different definitions led to the inconsistent identification of similar structures when aggregated across agencies, thereby reducing the reliability and accuracy of FRPP data on structures. For example, VA has created an “other” category that is different from buildings, land, and structures. This category includes monuments, statues, and flagpoles—items other agencies report as structures in FRPP. While this approach may be legitimate for VA purposes as long as it is applied consistently, it will not create consistent information government-wide when aggregated in FRPP. Because USDA and DOE did not define what constituted a structure, the categorization of structures may vary by installation, resulting in inconsistent information within the agencies. For example, officials at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Fort Ord National Monument classified the landscaping at a location as a structure in FRPP. Conversely, officials at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory did not classify landscaping, such as a fountain in front of a building, as a structure but considered it part of the building. This approach resulted in variation within DOE at the installation level, as well as being inconsistent with the FRPP guidance, which instructs agencies to report landscaping as a structure under “All Other.” Some facilities we visited were classified by some agencies as structures, even though they were similar to buildings (having features such as walls, roofs, doors, windows, and air-conditioning systems in some cases). Figure 2 shows some of these examples. GSA officials also said that different approaches to defining structures are legitimate under the guidance, but agreed that best practices require a consistent agency-wide approach. However, as a starting point to ensure that all agencies have a similar understanding of what constitutes a structure, the FRPC should update the FRPP guidance to include such a definition. Until this action occurs, there will be the increased likelihood that agencies will continue to define structures differently, thus negatively affecting the reliability of the data being collected. We found that officials, across agencies we reviewed, also counted structures differently, undermining the accuracy of the number of structures when totaled nationwide. OMB guidelines state that agencies should develop detailed guidance necessary for producing reliable, consistent data.count structures, and GSA officials stated that agencies can use different approaches as long as they are consistently applied by those agencies. GSA officials that manage FRPP said that they recognize that flexibility in the guidance could result in differences in how agencies designate structures, thereby creating issues with how comparable the data are across agencies. FRPP guidance does not instruct agencies on how to We found inconsistencies in how officials at different agencies for the sites we visited counted the same types of structures. For example, officials at the DOE sites we visited aggregated primary roads together into singular entries in the FRPP, while officials at the DOT sites we visited generally listed each road as separate entries. We also found that some officials at the agencies we visited separated features of a structure into multiple FRPP entries while other officials included all features as a one-structure entry. For example, at the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) sites we visited, officials manage large structures, such as power plants, dams, and canals, generally grouping various portions of the supporting infrastructure related to a main asset together into a single entry in the FRPP. Conversely, officials at the FAA sites we visited generally disaggregated the components of structures into multiple entries in the FRPP because the agency officials track their expenditures in multiple systems, and renovations sometimes result in additional entries. See figure 3 for an example of how agencies count structures differently. We found inconsistencies within agencies when counting structures. For example, Interior officials at the sites we visited would both aggregate and disaggregate roads. Officials at the BLM site we visited and all four NPS sites we visited, listed each road separately, while officials at the BOR sites and one of the Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) sites we visited sometimes included roads with related infrastructure, such as flood control dikes.