The federal government owns and leases hundreds of thousands of buildings and permanent structures across the country that cost billions of dollars annually to operate and maintain. Federally owned buildings range from multi-story buildings located in urban centers to remotely located storage facilities in national parks or national forests. Federally owned buildings are used for offices, warehouses, schools, hospitals, housing, data centers, and laboratories, among others uses. Our prior work has found that when these types of buildings remain vacant, they may be good candidates for disposal or re-use for another agency (see fig. 1). Within the executive branch, OMB and GSA provide leadership in managing federal real property. As the chief management office for the executive branch, OMB is responsible for overseeing how federal agencies devise, implement, manage, and evaluate programs and policies. OMB develops and provides direction, such as issuing policies and memorandums, to federal agencies on real property management matters. OMB reports the progress of agencies’ efforts in freezing and reducing the federal real property footprint. GSA acquires, manages, and disposes of federally owned real property for which it has custody and control. The Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended, provides GSA the authority to dispose of property for most federal entities and mandates the process for doing so. GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy is responsible for identifying, evaluating, and promoting best practices to improve the efficiency of management processes. In this policy role, GSA also provides guidance for federal entities and publishes performance measures. Established in 2004 in response to requirements in Executive Order 13327, FRPP is a single comprehensive database that contains information on federal real property worldwide, including disposal information, and is maintained by GSA. The 24 CFO Act agencies are required to report their real property data on an annual basis. Government decision makers—including Congress, OMB, and agencies—can use FRPP data to understand the nature, use, and extent of the federal real-property inventory. In its June 2015 and September 2016 testimonies to Congress on agencies’ progress in implementing OMB’s Freeze the Footprint initiative, OMB used FRPP data to report on domestic, federally owned building disposals. Since 2012, OMB has undertaken several initiatives and issued guidance to federal agencies to improve the management of federal real property and address long-standing issues. In March 2015, OMB introduced the National Strategy for Efficient Use of Real Property to improve federal utilization of the real property portfolio. The National Strategy adopts a policy framework intended to improve the cost effectiveness and efficiency of the federal real-property portfolio: it aims to freeze federal real-property growth and identifies policy actions to measure the cost and utilization of real property assets and reduces the size of the federal real property portfolio. In March 2015, OMB also issued the “Reduce the Footprint” policy, which directed CFO Act agencies to establish targets for the reduction of office and warehouse space and for the disposal of federally owned buildings beginning in fiscal year 2016. Further, in December 2016, real-property reform legislation was enacted that could address some of the long-standing issues pertaining to excess and underutilized property. For example, the Federal Asset Sales and Transfer Act of 2016 established a commission to identify opportunities for the federal government to reduce its inventory of civilian real property and reduce its costs. In addition, the Federal Property Management Reform Act of 2016 codified the Federal Real Property Council to ensure efficient and effective real-property management while reducing costs to the federal government. The act requires executive branch agencies to annually submit to the Federal Real Property Council a report on all excess and underutilized real property that is in the inventory of each executive agency, among other things. Our body of work on federal real property over the past 10 years has found that FRPP data quality is limited and could be improved. We previously reported that FRPP data can provide reliable background information on the real property portfolio and that data agencies submit match the data contained in the FRPP database. GSA employs a number of data reliability measures within FRPP to help agencies report reliable real-property data—for example, FRPP can flag some errors such as numbers that are outside of a reasonable range (e.g., a negative number for the operating costs), improperly formatted data, and blank data elements. However, we previously found certain data within FRPP, such as annual O&M costs, may be unreliable because agencies do not report this data accurately and consistently even though federal real- property reporting guidance requires them to certify the data’s accuracy. In March 2016, we reported on limitations in the usefulness of FRPP data due to inconsistencies in collecting and reporting data across agencies, and a lack of transparency into the limitations of the data. We recommended that GSA, along with OMB and federal agencies, assess, analyze, and identify any limitations in how agencies collect and report FRPP data. GSA partially concurred with this recommendation and is currently working to implement it, as described later in this report. Our analysis of FRPP found that disposal data were generally reliable for domestic, federally owned buildings (hereafter referred to as “buildings”) for fiscal years 2014 and 2015. While reliable data must be reasonably complete and accurate and meet the intended purposes, this finding does not mean the data are error-free. Errors are considered acceptable when they are not substantial enough to cause a reasonable person, aware of the errors, to doubt a finding, conclusion, or recommendation based on the data. For example, as described below, we found a few instances of buildings with square footage outside reasonable ranges; however, we determined these errors did not have a substantial effect on the overall reported disposal data. For the purposes of this report, we determined that the different elements of disposal data in the FRPP database (e.g., disposal date, disposal method, square feet, and annual O&M costs) were generally complete, within reasonable ranges, and internally consistent. Specifically, for fiscal years 2014 and 2015, we found the following pertaining to the completeness, reasonableness, and internal consistency of the data, based on our data reliability guidance: Completeness of the data: All of the buildings reported as disposed of included values for the disposal date, square feet, and annual O&M cost data fields. Similarly, all of the buildings disposed of by sale had a corresponding sale value reported. Reasonableness of the data ranges: Nearly all of the data fields we reviewed were within reasonable ranges. For instance, using a square footage value of under 1 as a proxy for a likely error, we found 6 of approximately 7,500 total disposed buildings in fiscal year 2014 to have a reported square footage value of less than 1. In fiscal year 2015, we found 2 of nearly 4,800 buildings with reported square footage values of less than 1. In addition, we did not find any O&M data fields below zero. Of approximately 7,500 buildings reported disposed of in fiscal year 2014, 134 had disposal dates outside of fiscal year 2014, and all of the buildings reported in fiscal year 2015 had dates that fell within the fiscal year. Internal consistency: Nearly all of the owned buildings’ disposal records in our review included methods of disposal consistent with common categories (e.g., sold, transferred, conveyed, or demolished) and all of the leased buildings disposed of during the review period were disposed of in ways consistent with leasing (e.g., lease termination, lease expiration, other). However, we found a large proportion of building disposals—nearly 50 percent—disposed of by “other” means in fiscal year 2014. Selected agencies explained to us that no other disposal categories applied to those properties in that year and our analysis mostly concurred in these cases (see app. I for more details on this analysis). OMB’s reporting of FRPP data was also generally reliable. To gauge the progress on the Freeze the Footprint initiative, OMB used FRPP data to report on the overall progress of the disposal of federal real property. OMB reported the number of disposed buildings along with the associated square footage and annual O&M costs for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 in its June 2015 and September 2016 testimonies to Congress. Beginning in fiscal year 2017, the Reduce the Footprint initiative calls for OMB to report annually on progress agencies make toward meeting annual disposal targets. Using FRPP data, we were able to replicate OMB’s reported data, despite minor inconsistencies in reporting. We found slightly lower numbers for the number of buildings, square feet, and annual O&M costs for both fiscal years 2014 and 2015, ranging from 2 to 10 percent lower (see table 1). We traced the differences in our analysis and the data OMB reported and we identified three minor inconsistencies, all of which led to some over-reporting of building disposals; we discuss this over-reporting in more detail later in this report. First, OMB reported FRPP data that contained buildings with a disposal date from another reporting year. Second, OMB reported FRPP data that contained buildings disposed of in multiple reporting years (i.e., counting a building more than once). Third, in fiscal year 2015, OMB reported FRPP data that contained buildings other than those owned by the federal government. Given that these inconsistencies resulted in minor differences in the number of building disposals, we determined that they did not affect the overall reliability of the government-wide disposal data. Our work found that the federal government has demonstrated continued commitment to improving the management of federal real property by executing a number of reform efforts, many of which should improve federal real property data, as described below.