Security at federal courthouses is complex and involves multiple federal stakeholders with different roles and responsibilities (see fig. 1). A 1997 memorandum of agreement (MOA) between these entities defines the roles and responsibilities for each of these stakeholders in protecting federal courthouses and the federal framework for securing courthouses. The MOA recognized areas in which stakeholders are to coordinate their security efforts and established an informal collaboration and oversight mechanism at the regional level. The following federal stakeholders receive funding for court security activities in different ways: FPS is funded by the security fees it collects from agencies that occupy GSA facilities for the security services FPS provides and does not receive a direct appropriation. The judiciary receives a court security appropriation. The amount for fiscal year 2016 was approximately $538 million. AOUSC uses part of this appropriation to pay for FPS fees and transfers part to the Marshals Service for specific judiciary related costs or security equipment. In addition to the funds received from AOUSC, the Marshals Service receives direct appropriations for construction in space controlled, occupied, or used by the Marshals Service for prisoner holding and related support (for example, vehicle sally ports and prisoner elevators). Instead of receiving direct appropriations, GSA administers the Federal Buildings Fund, which is the primary source of funds for operating federal space held under the custody and control of GSA and the capital costs associated with the space. The Federal Buildings Fund is funded primarily by income from rental charges assessed to tenant agencies occupying GSA-held and -leased space that approximate commercial rates for comparable space and services. Congress exercises control over the Federal Buildings Fund through the appropriations process that sets annual limits— called obligational authority—on how much of the fund can be obligated for various activities. GSA, as an executive branch agency, requests obligational authority from Congress as part of the annual President’s Budget Request. GSA’s total obligational authority for fiscal year 2016 was approximately $10.2 billion. The Interagency Security Committee (ISC) addresses the quality and effectiveness of physical security for federal facilities, including courthouses. The ISC sets out the risk management process for federal facilities in the ISC’s risk management standard. Pursuant to this standard, FPS conducts facility security assessments, which consist of identifying and assessing threats to, and vulnerabilities of, a facility as well as identifying countermeasures (e.g., security equipment) best suited to mitigate vulnerabilities at the facility. These assessments generally focus on building systems and perimeter and entry issues. The ISC risk management standard also lays out standards for establishing facility security committees, which consist of a representative from each of the tenant agencies in the facility, and which are responsible for addressing security issues identified in the facility security assessment and approving the implementation of recommended security countermeasures. These standards include the following: facility security committees are established when two or more federal tenants with funding authority occupy a facility, findings from the FPS facility security assessments are to be presented at facility security committee meetings, and meeting minutes must document each vote to approve or disapprove a recommended countermeasure, and if agenda decisions are disapproved, the meeting minutes must document the chosen risk management strategy. As new threats to federal facilities have emerged, the federal government has released additional directives related to the security of federal facilities, including courthouses. For example: The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical Infrastructures and Key Assets. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, the White House developed this National Strategy to ensure that initial efforts to protect key assets were sustained over the long term. Courthouse security falls under the National Strategy which outlines the guiding principles that underpin national efforts to secure infrastructure and assets vital to public health and safety, national security, governance, economy, and public confidence. The National Infrastructure Protection Plan. DHS developed this plan to guide the national effort to manage risks to critical infrastructure. Identifying security concerns at federal courthouses is critical to managing the risk to those courthouses. We previously compiled a risk management framework applicable to protecting federal facilities that defined risk management in general as managing across a portfolio. We have also issued other reports in recent years that discuss the importance of understanding risk comprehensively (rather than only on an individual building basis) in order to effectively protect federal facilities consistent with that definition. AOUSC collects security information in a way that provides a picture of portfolio-wide concerns and can be used to comprehensively understand security concerns across the portfolio of federal courthouses. AOUSC assesses and scores courthouses on the security features of court operations, in accordance with the U.S. Courts Design Guide as part of their long-range capital-planning process, according to AOUSC officials. Through this process, AOUSC develops security scores for courthouses that range from 0 to 100, with 100 being an ideal courthouse that meets all assessed security factors, as determined by the judiciary. These scores allow the judiciary to compare security needs across courthouses and understand the relative security deficiencies of one courthouse compared to others. AOUSC has three categories to describe these security scores: below 60 is poor, 60–79 is marginal to acceptable, and 80–100 is good. AOUSC’s scores reflect different aspects of courthouse security, such as whether the courthouse has separate pathways for judicial personnel, prisoners, jury members, and the public; secured parking for judges; vehicle sally ports for prisoner transport; an adequate number of courtroom holding cells; and physical barriers to block unwarranted vehicular access. While AOUSC’s security scores consider some aspects of security on the perimeter and in space where prisoners are held, detailed assessments of these aspects of security are the responsibility of FPS and the Marshals Service, consistent with their missions. The Marshals Service and FPS also identify security concerns at individual courthouse facilities, focused on their respective missions, but unlike AOUSC, they do not currently collect this information in a way that it can be readily compared across the portfolio of courthouses to gauge the overall concerns with these buildings. As discussed below, the Marshals Service identifies security concerns through two kinds of project requests to address security concerns. The Marshals Service is taking steps to improve the information it collects; however, these steps may not enable it to understand concerns portfolio-wide as defined by our risk management framework, because of the reasons discussed below. Marshals Service officials told us that previously, they had no means to prioritize among project requests to correct deficiencies in judicial space, such as those in courtrooms. The Marshals Service is piloting an initiative to create a means of prioritizing these requests into three levels of priority. However, Marshals Service officials told us that they still will not be able to compare similar concerns from one courthouse to another once the improvements to the process are made, because similar concerns would fall into the same priority level, and the initiative does not have a method for prioritizing within the same priority level. For projects to correct deficiencies in Marshals Service space, such as the areas used to move prisoners throughout the courthouse, headquarters Marshals Service officials told us that they currently rely on institutional knowledge to evaluate requests. Marshals Service officials said that it can be difficult to determine which projects to fund and not all officials would arrive at the same decisions, as there is currently no standard process for reviewing project requests and making funding decisions. To improve this process, the Marshals Service is developing a decision matrix to document how decisions are made, but officials said they were not sure if this process would result in a way to compare projects as part of the portfolio of courthouses, as they are still early in the process of developing the matrix. FPS conducts facility security assessments of individual buildings, including courthouses. These assessments consist of identifying and assessing threats to and vulnerabilities of a facility, for example, whether security equipment is working properly. FPS shares these assessments and recommendations for countermeasures with the building’s facility security committee as part of the security services it provides to its customer agencies, and the facility security committee votes on whether to approve or disapprove suggested countermeasures. Information on the status of FPS countermeasure recommendations— whether facility security committees have accepted, rejected, or not made a decision—can provide insight into the level of risk tenant agencies accept at a particular facility and enables risk-informed decisions. FPS began tracking the facility security committee decisions at the individual facility level in fiscal year 2015. Our prior work has found that the tool FPS uses to conduct facility security assessments was not designed to compare risks across federal facilities. FPS officials recognize the value of being able to analyze countermeasures across courthouses and other federal buildings. They said that this information would provide a greater understanding of which countermeasures were consistently accepted or rejected, which could help FPS make better recommendations for all federal buildings, not just courthouses, in its facility security assessments. For example, if FPS knew that a particular recommendation was frequently rejected because it is cost prohibitive, FPS might look for another less costly option to mitigate that deficiency, according to officials. FPS is also pursuing the capability to track the status of countermeasures in an automated way as part of initial plans for a software upgrade for its vulnerability assessment tool that allows FPS inspectors to review recommended countermeasures, among other things. However, officials were not certain when, or if, this capability will be ultimately included in the upgrade. FPS officials said that absent the capability to track countermeasure status in an automated way, obtaining information on whether countermeasure recommendations are accepted or rejected across all courthouses (or analyzing it by other variables) would be a labor-intensive process because relevant data are not easy to retrieve and would have to be done so manually. FPS officials said that there might be other ways to obtain this capability, but so far, they have not developed them.