Federal organizations relocate their civilian employees to help them accomplish their many varied and unique missions. Organizations carry out their missions through a civilian workforce of nearly 2 million employees assigned to offices in locations throughout the United States, its territories and possessions, and various foreign countries. The Secretary of State determines the length of an overseas tour for Foreign Service Officers. The tour of duty overseas for Department of Defense (DOD) employees is prescribed by DOD’s Joint Travel Regulations (2 JTR). When civilian employees are authorized to relocate in the interests of the government, they are to be authorized to relocate prior to the time they actually move, and they generally have up to 2 years, and can request a third year, from the date that they report to their new location to complete the relocation and receive reimbursement for the associated costs. Therefore, the actual relocation may not take place in the fiscal year that it is authorized. Also, expenses associated with the relocation may be paid to the employee over the 2- to 3-year period. Two federal laws provide government organizations with the primary authority to pay the travel and related expenses of relocating a civilian employee: the Administrative Expenses Act of 1946, as amended, 5 U.S.C. §§ 5701-5742, and the Foreign Service Act of 1980, 22 U.S.C. 4081. GSA’s Federal Travel Regulation (FTR), 41 C.F.R., chapters 301 to 304, implements the provisions of the Administrative Expenses Act. FTR, chapter 302, governs the travel and relocation expenses of civilian employees, except those in the Foreign Service. Based on authority provided in the Foreign Service Act, travel and relocation expenses for Foreign Service Officers are prescribed by the Secretary of State in the Foreign Service Travel Regulations. These regulations are contained in volume 6 of the Foreign Affairs Manual (6 FAM). Once any civilian employee is located in a foreign area, his or her travel allowances and differentials are set by the Secretary of State in the Standardized Regulations (Government Civilians, Foreign Areas). Both the Department of State’s and GSA’s travel regulations authorize federal organizations to pay basically the same expenses for relocations within the United States. These expenses include transportation of individuals, per diem, subsistence, transportation and storage of household and personal effects, and real estate expenses. The key difference is that Foreign Service Officers are not entitled to relocation income tax allowances. Overseas, the Standard Regulations apply to both Foreign Service Officers and other civilian employees, and generally provide them with the same allowances. These allowances include living quarters allowance, temporary quarters subsistence allowance, and cost of living allowance. One difference is that Foreign Service Officers are entitled to separation travel, which is relocation to anyplace in the United States that they choose upon retirement regardless of where they are located when they retire. On the other hand, other civilian employees returning from overseas are only entitled to reimbursement for travel and relocation expenses to their home of record. Another difference is that Foreign Service Officers may be authorized rest and recuperation travel when assigned to a hardship post. In order to receive reimbursement for relocation expenses/allowances to which they are entitled, both civilian employees and Foreign Service Officers must sign a service agreement to remain with the government for 12 months after the date that they report to their new duty station, mission, or agency, unless they leave the government for reasons beyond their control and that are acceptable to the agency. An employee who violates the agreement must repay the government the amount it spent to relocate him or her. Neither FTR nor FAM specifically define the term relocation. For the purposes of this report, we define relocation as (1) the transfer, in the interest of the government, of an existing civilian employee or appointee from one office, mission, or agency to another for permanent duty; (2) the moving of a new eligible appointee from his or her actual residence in one location to his or her first office or mission in another location; (3) the return of an existing eligible civilian employee or appointee who is separated from an overseas office or mission to his or her actual residence; and (4) the return of an existing eligible career appointee on retirement from an office or mission to his or her elected residence within the United States, its territories, or possessions. Collecting exact cost information for relocation travel is difficult. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A-11, Preparation and Submission of Budget Estimates and Circular No. A-34 Instructions on Budget Execution require that federal organizations record obligations and expenditures by object class according to the nature of the services or articles procured. There are no object classes dedicated solely to recording relocation travel obligations and expenditures. Rather, relocation obligations and expenditures are captured in at least four different object classes, along with obligations and expenses that are not related to relocation travel. These object classes include (1) 12.1 civilian personnel benefits; (2) 21.0 travel and transportation of persons; (3) 22.0 transportation of things; and (4) 25.7 operation and maintenance of equipment (related to storage of household goods). As a result, relocation obligations and expenditures cannot be extracted from OMB budget/object class data. Instead, relocation obligations and expenditures must be obtained from each federal organization through queries of its automated systems or examination of its travel records. As the government’s travel manager, GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy is responsible for establishing governmentwide civilian travel and relocation policy, updating FTR, gathering travel and relocation costs, and providing leadership to develop sound travel and relocation policy. GSA was required by the Federal Civilian Employee and Contractor Travel Expenses Act of 1985, 5 U.S.C. § 5707(c), to periodically, but at least every 2 years, submit to the Director of OMB an analysis of, among other things, estimated total agency payments for employee relocation. GSA is to survey a sampling of agencies, each of which spent more than $5 million on travel and transportation payments in the prior fiscal year. This provision was to expire with the administrator’s submission of the analysis that included fiscal year 1991. The Treasury, Postal Service and General Government Appropriations Act of 1995, Pub. L. No. 103-329 (Sept. 30, 1994), reinstated this provision with no future expiration date. GSA collected the required travel information for fiscal years 1989, 1990, and 1991. However, GSA only analyzed the travel information for fiscal year 1989. GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy recently distributed its survey to collect travel information, including relocation travel, for fiscal year 1996. To provide the requested civilian employee relocation information, we developed and distributed a questionnaire to 120 federal organizations. We asked the organizations to report their total number of and cost for civilian employee relocations. We also asked whether they had a rotational policy that resulted in civilian employee relocations. We received responses from 119 (or 99 percent) of the 120 organizations surveyed. The Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, which had a civilian workforce of less than 400 employees, did not provide a response. The names of the organizations that we surveyed are listed in appendix I. To develop the questionnaire and ensure its completeness, we researched FTR and OMB Circular No. A-11 to identify the allowances for relocation expenses and the object classes that federal organizations use to record relocation obligations, respectively. We drafted the questionnaire with the assistance of our staff knowledgeable in federal travel and relocation practices. We pretested the questionnaire with the following six organizations: the Bureau of the Census, Defense Educational Activity, Department of State, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marine Corps, and Office of Personnel Management. Using the pretest results, we revised the questionnaire to help ensure that our questions were interpreted correctly and that the requested relocation information was available. We did not independently verify the accuracy of the civilian employee relocation information that the federal organizations provided or assess the appropriateness of their relocations or the associated cost because of time constraints and the number of organizations surveyed. However, we reviewed each questionnaire for clarity and completeness and followed up with the organization’s contact person in those instances in which the responses were unclear or incomplete. To provide information on rotational policies that resulted in civilian employee relocations, we obtained copies of these policies from the pertinent federal organizations. We reviewed the policies to understand their purposes, their rotational requirements, and which employees were affected. Additionally, we interviewed cognizant officials to discuss the policies in greater detail, clarify specific issues, and determine current use of the policies. Appendix II contains a more detailed description of our objectives, scope, and methodology. We did our work in Washington, D.C., from June 1996 to June 1997 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Because it was impractical for us to obtain comments from all 119 federal organizations, we requested comments on a draft of this report from the Director of OMB and the Administrator of GSA. Their comments are discussed at the end of this letter. Most of the federal organizations that responded to our survey reported authorizing over 130,000 relocations and the other organizations reported making over 40,000 relocations during fiscal years 1991 through 1995. A small percentage of the organizations reported the majority of the relocations. Over half of the relocations authorized or made were reported by 7 percent and 9 percent of the organizations, respectively. In addition, while the total number of relocations authorized and the total number of relocations made fluctuated yearly across the organizations that reported data for all 5 fiscal years, there was moderate overall change between fiscal years 1991 and 1995.