The Census Bureau is looking to roll out a remote work policy it drafted at the end of last year, but is rethinking how many employees can opt in, after Congress recently set minimum utilization rates for federal buildings.

The Census Bureau agreed to a remote work policy last December, and a working group is working on implementation details.

Census Bureau Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer Ron Jarmin told employees in an all-staff email last week that once an implementation plan is finalized in the coming weeks, employees will be approved for remote work “in special situations determined by the remote work implementation working group.”

“Our policy must follow departmental and administrative guidelines and will have limits which significantly impact the number of employees who will be approved for remote work across the Census Bureau,” Jarmin wrote.

Jarmin said the bureau strongly recommends employees do not move outside the commuting area of their official duty station until they receive remote work approval.

Meanwhile, the Census Bureau is reconfiguring its headquarters to bring more Commerce Department employees under one roof.

American Federation of Government Employees Council 241 President Johnny Zuagar said in an interview with Federal News Network that the Census Bureau headquarters is undergoing renovations and giving up 50% of its headquarters space to accommodate employees from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The bureau’s headquarters, he added, will shift to a hoteling model following the renovations, meaning employees will have to reserve a desk for the days they plan to work in-person.

“We have done what they’re saying. We looked at our real estate, and we redid it. We have consolidated with other agencies, we are moving to smaller spaces that are at other locations. So we’re doing exactly what they’re asking,” Zuagar said. “We’re using the space efficiently and effectively. We are making adjustments. This is going to take a couple of years to know where the right balance is, but we’ll find that out.”

AFGE Council 241 Vice President Vickie Martin said Census Bureau employees who work outside the Suitland, Maryland headquarters are expected to work in the office a minimum of two days per pay period — although in-office expectations vary by position. Zuagar said some employees are working in-person every day.

Martin said the union initially expected more Census employees would be eligible to enroll in the remote work policy, but language in the fiscal 2024 spending deal set minimum occupancy requirements for federal buildings, and “handcuffed us a little bit” on the scope of remote work.

Lawmakers, in the spending deal for the rest of fiscal 2024, are requiring agencies with an office space utilization rate of less than 60% to report to Congress on their efforts to reduce their real estate footprint.

Agencies as part of the appropriations package will also have to provide information on the average number and percentage of employees working in the office during a typical two-week pay period, as well as their recent telework policies.

“We’re not going to give up on expanding that and getting further flexibilities for our people. But, we’re also not going to jeopardize what they’ve been able to gain, as far as flexibilities now,” Martin said.

A Census Bureau spokeswoman said in a statement that the bureau’s headquarters is under construction to modernize the building and bring Bureau of Labor Statistics employees into the building. During the renovations, the spokeswoman said “employees have been working under maximum telework.”

The bureau expects to reopen its headquarters building this summer.

“Employees have been notified that they will receive a 60-day notice before headquarters begins a phased reopening and will be required to comply with existing policies upon their return,” the spokeswoman said.

Discover more now:

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Lawmakers call SBA’s return to office policy ‘extremely minimal’

Labor employees protest at their office for more telework riles up lawmakers 

The post Census Bureau rethinks scope of remote work policy, consolidates office space first appeared on Federal News Network.

Once people got over the shock of the Maryland bridge collapse, the long-term questions started to arise. Like, what about the nation’s supply chain, given that the Key Bridge is the entrance to an important shipping port. For analysis, The Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Dr. Philip Evers, University of Maryland supply chain management professor.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin What are the supply chain effects? I mean, everything I’ve heard seems to indicate that some automobile shipments will take longer in parts. But is there more to this port than that?

Philip Evers Well, the Port of Baltimore is a mid-sized port relative to other ports in the country. So the port is very important, in the region. But if you look on a national scale, it’s much smaller than a port like, Los Angeles, Long Beach or the Port of New York, New Jersey. So I see a lot of short term issues that arise. Long term, I don’t see major effects outside of the Central Maryland area.

Tom Temin Interesting. So any indications that we have yet. Shipping will return more than we’ll talk about the surface transportation, which is a much longer term effect, but it’ll take them probably months to get the pieces of metal and so forth out so ships can come and go. Fair to say?

Philip Evers Absolutely. But in that time, the freight that would be coming to Baltimore, could, for the most part, be easily diverted to another port.

Tom Temin Yes, because Florida has a couple of big shipping ports, too, right?

Philip Evers Well, there there are ports all up and down the the East Coast, recognized that practically every ship that goes to Baltimore passes in Norfolk. The Port of Virginia is right there. So again, there’s lots for most items, especially for containerized freight, such as the freight that was on the ship that had the incident. Those containers could be offloaded somewhere else. Some of the more specialized freight might be a little bit harder to handle in the short term.

Tom Temin So then again, outside of automobiles, then we don’t really know what is important to the rest of the world coming through Baltimore, because containers on a ship can have everything from computers to whiffle balls.

Philip Evers Sure, absolutely. And we’re kind of thinking about this in terms of imports, but there’s also the export activities. And that I think is going to have maybe a slightly larger effect. Port of Baltimore certainly, handles a lot of export automobiles, but they handle some other export products as well that might affect other places in the world.

Tom Temin For federal government supply chains. Yes, the government buys vehicles, but they buy all of these other commodities, a lot of military gear. It doesn’t seem like this would have that much effect on what the federal government is acquiring.

Philip Evers I can’t imagine that it would have that big of impact, obviously some secondary impacts, but I don’t think anything major.

Tom Temin Now the port will get cleaned up and operational, presumably long before the road over it gets put back together. And that is, as people locally know, part of the Baltimore Beltway, which is a circle, a complete circle. And so when you take out a segment of a circle, you can’t get from point A to point B without going backwards around the long way. What about surface transportation?

Philip Evers I think you hit on the main point. I think the longer term the big issue will be with surface transportation, not with ocean transportation. Because as you say, they will be able to clean once a search and rescue mission are finished. They’ll be able to get onto the removal of the debris in the water, but it’s going to take a long time for that bridge to get rebuilt. And if you think about it, there are four. Well, there were four interstate paths through Baltimore, the two tunnels, the bridge and the other side of the beltway. And now one of those is missing. The Key Bridge certainly handled the fewest automobiles of the four, but it handled a lot of trucking because the trucks that carry hazardous materials are not allowed to go through the tunnels. So that’s one thing that’s going to put more, possibly more trucks around the other side of the beltway jamming that up more.

Tom Temin And you can get off I-95 through Baltimore and go down to a short highway called 395. But within moments you are on narrow surface streets.

Philip Evers Exactly. So for long distance truckers, and of course, anyone driving, let’s say from DC to New York, you’re probably not going to do much of that cutting through the town.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Dr. Philip Evers. He’s associate professor of supply chain management at the University of Maryland’s business school. There’s a third mode here called rail and the Baltimore Tunnel coming out of the city, going south toward the East coast. That’s long been an object of attention because the bridge, it’s a really old tunnel, and the double piggyback containers that come off of ships sometimes can’t fit two up on a train and get through that tunnel. And wasn’t there infrastructure money at long last to rebuild that tunnel?

Philip Evers Yes. Some of the the very initial work on that is is starting to happen. There’s two tunnels in Baltimore. There’s the Amtrak tunnel, which is an extremely old tunnel, and there is now money and there’s now work progressing on that. And that’s at the very initial stages. There’s also the Howard Street Tunnel, which is a CSX, line. That’s freight only. But that line is now also being expanded, to allow for double stack.

Tom Temin Expanded, meaning they have to scoop it out bigger.

Philip Evers  Exactly.

Tom Temin And that’s not a minor engineering thing. I know you’re not an engineer, but that’s not a minor undertaking, is it?

Philip Evers No. In neither of those two tunnels, it cases is that minor. They’re both going to be major project. Much as I’ll point out, and you may recall in in DC, the Virginia Avenue tunnel expansion 10 or 15 years ago was a significant undertaking, but it was done relatively quickly.

Tom Temin And let me ask you about a bigger question. And that is people that are doing procurement on behalf of organizations, in our case, contracting officers. Shipping was something that you consider. Do you think that in the future shipping, shipping methods, shipping costs, shipping warranties should be a bigger part of the thinking of people that are trying to get things acquired and delivered?

Philip Evers Let me come at that in a slightly different perspective. One of the things that occurred during COVID was firms started to really think about the resiliency of their supply chain, especially after 2021. And there were all the problems on the West Coast, in L.A. and Long Beach, firms really started to take resiliency seriously. And so a lot of firms have started to put supply chain backup plans into place. Now we know that plans are always off, but at least firms are now starting to think about these things. So I think in this case, this would be really our first major experience with resiliency planning since firms have really started to kick around this idea. So I’m sure everything won’t go swimmingly, but it will give us experience and I think we will recover better and faster than had firms not been thinking about this to begin with.

Tom Temin And so probably the most critical aspect for the government might be military supplies and deliveries, which are often heavy items or coming by train or full size truck. Therefore, that resiliency would be something military acquisition people should be thinking about.

Philip Evers Sure. Now, again, I don’t know how much military cargo comes directly into a Baltimore.

Tom Temin Probably none.

Philip Evers Probably none. And again, Norfolk is right there. I don’t see this being as big of an impact on the military is more on the commercial side out of Baltimore.

The post Will that bridge collapse in Maryland affect federal supply chains? first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Office of Personnel Management should take the lead on implementing stricter guidelines around any potential agency relocations, according to a recent petition for proposed rulemaking from non-profit, non-partisan organization Democracy Forward.

The rulemaking petition specifically calls on OPM to establish a clear, standard process among agencies any time they may look to relocate or move a federal office. The proposed process would require agencies to consult employees, analyze costs and consider how the move would impact staffing and attrition, all before the agency announces a relocation.

The petition also calls for agencies to document evidence and data to back up the purpose of the relocation. And in cases where retention is a concern, agencies would have to consider offering flexibilities such as remote work where possible. Agencies would also have to have a clear human capital management plan related to the possible relocation, according to the petition.

Without more specific guidelines in place, Democracy Forward said in its petition that stability, expertise and institutional knowledge could suffer as a result of agency relocations, ultimately contributing to a decline in the public’s trust in government.

“The petition for rulemaking that we submitted to OPM would be another step in helping fortify that important element of our functioning government,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in an interview. “We believe this petition is a straightforward and basic step, but it’s a critical one to help prevent any future government from using poorly planned and executed office relocations as a way of stripping the work Americans rely on.”

The National Treasury Employees Union is now joining Democracy Forward’s calls in the petition, further urging action from OPM on potential future agency relocations. NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald said the petition would establish important guardrails, notably with the proposed requirement for agencies to engage with their own employees before initiating a relocation.

“These protective measures would help ensure that any relocations are not taken for improper reasons, such as undermining our civil service,” Greenwald wrote in March 20 letter to OPM Director Kiran Ahuja. “Federal employees and the public deserve a stable, professional workforce.”

OPM did not immediately respond to Federal News Network’s request for comment on any plans to address the petition or possibly undertake a rulemaking change as a result.

Prior agency relocations led to attrition

The petition comes largely in response to 2019 relocations of the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters office, as well as two components of the Department of Agriculture: The Economic Research Service (ERS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

USDA’s decision during the Trump administration to relocate two research agencies to Kansas City, Missouri, resulted in major staff attrition, with 40% of ERS staff and 60% of NIFA staff leaving their jobs.

USDA largely recovered its staff numbers by September 2021, but the two agencies are still facing long-term consequences. Both workforces are now less diverse and less experienced, the Government Accountability Office found. The percentage of Black employees at NIFA, for instance, dropped from 47% to 19% after the relocation.

In 2022, GAO also reported that although USDA had outlined a plan for narrowing down its selection to Kansas City, the department ultimately strayed from its plan and didn’t follow its own criteria — notably by not accounting for staff attrition.

Additionally, USDA’s relocation of NIFA and ERS later revealed a violation the Antideficiency Act (ADA), as USDA failed to meet congressional notification requirements in its plans to relocate.

Aligning with efforts to ‘fortify’ civil service

The goals of the rulemaking petition more broadly align with other Biden administration efforts to prevent what Perryman said are “highly concerning” possible changes to the civil service in a future administration.

Most notably, OPM already has plans underway aiming to protect career federal employees against the effects of a possible Schedule F revival.

“We are encouraged by the steps that OPM has taken in order to help protect the civil service to try to prevent something like what the prior administration did — with respect to Schedule F — from going into effect again,” Perryman said. “We do see this petition as another positive step that could help fortify the independence of our civil service and the ability of our government to operate effectively.”

Concerns about agency relocations have gained more recent attention on Capitol Hill as well. A bicameral bill, called the Conducting Oversight to Secure Transparency (COST) of Relocations Act, would require agencies to conduct studies and create a detailed reports of the costs and benefits of relocating — prior to making the move.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) first introduced the bill in February 2023. So far, there has been no further action on the legislation, but a staff member for Wexton said the issue continues to be a priority.

“The COST of Relocations Act would shine a light on agency relocations,” Wexton said in a statement. “Requiring a comprehensive and public cost-benefit analysis of agency relocations prevents partisan efforts to undermine the mission of our federal agencies and ensures taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately.”

The post More guardrails needed for any potential agency relocations, federal advocates say first appeared on Federal News Network.

Federal employees’ use of telework, in the long term, could give agencies a unique opportunity to get rid of office space they no longer need, according to a recent study.

The National Capital Planning Commission, in partnership with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), released a study in February looking at the federal workforce’s use of telework and its impact on government office space.

The study finds that federal telework will “likely accelerate the implementation of reducing the federal footprint,” but may also shake up the local economy of Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area.

“Any changes in federal telework policy will have a significant impact on Washington, given that it has a large component of telework-eligible jobs,” the study states.

Only about 15% of the federal workforce works in the national capital region, but the federal government is still the region’s largest single employer and its largest owner of real estate.

The General Services Administration holds about 47 million square feet of owned space and 44 million square feet of leased space in the national capital region. That translates into about 190 federally owned buildings and 500 federally leased buildings.

Meanwhile, the 400,000 federal employees working in the D.C. metro area make up about 11% of the region’s total workforce.

NCPC Senior Urban Planner Angela Dupont said in a recent interview that more teleworking federal employees may give agencies a chance to shed underutilized office space.

“Before the pandemic, we already acknowledged that there were a lot of federal buildings that were underutilized. Federal telework just helps us accelerate the opportunities to either use our space better when federal agencies may be consolidating in the future,” Dupont said.

The study looks at several scenarios. On the low end, it studies a “minimum,” pre-pandemic level of telework from federal employees — about one or two days each two-week pay period.

The study also considers the impact of a “moderate” (four to six days per pay period) and “maximum” (eight to 10 days per pay period) level of federal telework.

“As you get to more telework, there is probably a greater ability to reduce a lot of this federal office space, because the demand for a federal office may not be as great, when you have more federal workers teleworking,” Dupont said.

Federal telework’s impact on the region, however, may vary across D.C., Virginia and Maryland.

Stan Wall, managing partner of the D.C. office of HR&A Advisors, Inc., which conducted the study, said a concentration of mostly in-person defense and national security jobs in Virginia will likely result in minimal impact on the local economy.

“If you are a Northern Virginia jurisdiction, and you know that your county or your city has a number of defense facilities, fairly few administrative, you can probably be fairly comfortable that your return to work is going to look a lot like pre-pandemic,” Wall said.

The same goes for Maryland, because of a higher concentration of federal research and laboratory facilities — such as the National Institutes of Health.

The study, however, finds any lasting changes in federal telework policy will have a significant impact on Washington, “given that it has a large component of telework-eligible jobs,” and accounts for nearly half of the leased federal office space in the region.

More than half of GSA’s leases are set to expire by 2027.

While agencies are selling workplace flexibility as a perk to new hires, Wall said it’s also allowed federal employees to be more dispersed.

“Rather than want to live near transit, live close to the core of the city, people might be moving out further into the suburban areas, rural areas, where they can afford housing,” Wall said.

The Biden administration since last fall has been urging federal employees in the D.C. area to return to the office more often.  Meanwhile, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is looking to revitalize downtown , in the hopes of drawing more business to the area.

Wall said the federal and local governments can also take less coercive steps to get government workers to work in the office more often.

“It’s not just a policy of get back in the office, it’s how do we create that environment where you actually want to be there in the office,” Wall said. “Even if it might be required to be there two days a week, I might want to be in the office four days a week, because I really have these great restaurants, great parks, great other amenities that helped me want to be in the office,” Wall said.

The post Telework likely to accelerate plans to shrink federal government office space, study finds first appeared on Federal News Network.

Under the 2016 legislation, a small, independent agency faces a gargantuan task — to help the federal government shrink its portfolio of real estate, which currently contributes to more than $16 billion in annual costs.

The board began its work in 2019, but the scope of its mission transformed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Agencies, with a telework-savvy workforce, are rethinking their long-term office space needs — even as the Biden administration is calling on federal employees to return to the office more often.

Congress, the General Services Administration, and the Office of Management and Budget are doubling down on efforts to reduce federal office space.

PBRB members see a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shrink the federal real estate footprint, and are calling on lawmakers to extend its expiration date past May 2025.

But so far, the board recommendations have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue — but not the billions that Congress envisioned — from the sale of 10 federal buildings.

For context, the 24 largest agencies disposed of nearly 2,000 federally owned buildings in fiscal 2022, reducing more than 11 million square feet of space — and bringing in more than $35 million in profits.

‘There’s a lot of great work that still needs to be done’

Board member Talmage Hocker, founder of a private real estate firm in Lexington, Kentucky, told Federal News Network that extending the board’s tenure would benefit GSA, as it looks to accelerate sale and disposal efforts.

“There’s a lot of great work that still needs to be done. The board was put together so that we could bring together best practices from both public and private sector, and create a method that we can dispose of real estate,” Hocker said. “We’ve identified a lot of things that work well, and we’ve identified a few things that we believe could use a tweak. And if we can get them,  the Public Buildings Reform Board can be a wonderful agency, and create a lot of income for the government.”

The board is working on its final round of recommendations. They’re due to OMB by the end of this year. Hocker said the board looked at more than 50 federal properties.

“We’re going to see some more high-value assets, even though it’s not called the high-value round,” Hocker said. “We’re going to continue to look for some larger properties, where there’s a major interest. We don’t believe that people get excited about a little courthouse in a small, small town, that might sell for half a million dollars or $200,000. That’s just not what this legislation was designed for. And so, we’re going to continue with larger projects.”

Paul Walden, the board’s executive director, said part of the challenge is understanding what properties will remain underutilized as the Biden administration is bringing federal employees back to the office more often.

“It’s really all over the board, from the agencies I’ve talked to. Just within one department, one bureau has a mandate [that] you only have to be in the office one day a pay period. Whereas another bureau says, ‘No, no, you have to be in the office three days a week.’ So there’s no real consistency among departments. The jury’s still out on what that looks like. Agencies are still trying to wrestle with that,” Walden said.

There’s also some unanswered questions about how often federal employees are expected to work in the office in the years to come — and whether those expectations will change substantially under subsequent administrations.

“Do we, as a government, want to play a hand and tell everybody they don’t have to come back? And therefore, the retail goes out of business. Are we ready for these towns to become ghost towns? And are we ready for the loss of tax revenue.? Hocker said. “I’m all for telework … I’m not sure that every position can be handled from home. And it’s an issue that’s going to be studied for a long time before we get to the right answer.”

GSA efforts to sell federal buildings — with or without FASTA

Dan Mathews, a former commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, and the PBRB’s newest member, said that for momentum to continue these efforts, GSA, OMB and the board all need to make right-sizing federal property a top priority.

“It’s such an obvious issue. It’s so simple for almost anyone to understand that an increased remote work and telework posture has emptied out these buildings. And so, now they need to realign the portfolio,” Mathews said. “It’s just so self-evident that they’re really going to drive that forward.  we’re going to see a lot of change over the next year. If the agencies don’t start putting those types of plans forward, Congress is going to do it for them.”

However, another former PBS commissioner, Norman Dong, now a partner at the real estate firm FD Stonewater, said it’s unclear what FASTA if anything, has done to expedite GSA’s process for identifying and selling underutilized federal real estate.

“I’ve been underwhelmed by the collective federal response here,” Dong said. “We’ve heard from different folks a million reasons and excuses why these buildings can’t be disposed of. You heard COVID. You heard the board not having a quorum. It’s one thing after another, and there’s always an excuse, in terms of why it’s not getting done. And it’s so easy just to talk about the difficulties in disposing of federal property. Yeah, it’s hard … but by no means is this an insurmountable task.”

Flavio Peres, GSA’s assistant commissioner of real property disposition told Federal News Network in a statement that a majority of the board’s 12 High-Value Asset round recommendations were already in GSA’s disposition pipeline before PBRB made its recommendations.

However, Peres said FASTA provided funding that expedited the disposition timeline for several of those projects.

“That funding was critical, because when an agency has funding to relocate from an asset that no longer meets its mission needs, the timeline for preparing an asset for disposition can be accelerated significantly,” he said.

Peres said that over the past five years, GSA has completed more than 500 disposition projects across the federal government. GSA’s data includes properties that have been transferred to another federal agency, transferred at no cost to eligible public bodies or nonprofit organizations or sold at fair market value through negotiated sale or competitive public sale. That disposal work led to $1 billion in proceeds, and the disposal of more than 12 million feet of real estate.

Since 1987, GSA has transferred over $3 billion in federal properties to new owners. About one-third of those properties went to state or local governments, or to nonprofits.

Dong said GSA’s track record shows that it’s more than capable of identifying and selling underutilized real estate — with or without FASTA.

For example, Dong pointed to a decade-long experiment to make better use of federal real estate that finally wrapped last fall.

The Transportation Department last September opened its doors to the new John Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Boston.

The project began in the fall of 2016, when GSA reached a deal with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The university agreed to build the new Volpe Center, in exchange for letting it redevelop the rest of the 14-acre federal research campus.

“We already have evidence of the federal government being able to do this. There’s already demonstrated ability to execute difficult and complex disposal and exchange transactions,” Dong said.

‘Real property sales are difficult’

Mathews said that for all the challenges the PBRB is facing, the board — and the FASTA legislation that created it — helps fast-track the sale and disposal process.

Mathews said FASTA waived a lot of the existing disposal laws, especially with the high-value asset round, to put properties up for sale, without having to see if a state or local government – or another federal agency – wants to use the space.

“Real property sales are difficult. That’s why, when I was in Congress, we actually drafted that bill — because it’s hard to sell. There’s so many laws that come into play that encumber properties, that cover what can be done with the property afterwards. So it’s a tall order,” Mathews said.

Properties sold under FASTA are exempt from the 1987 McKinney-Vento Act, which requires the federal government to determine if underutilized federal properties are suitable for homelessness assistance, before putting them up for sale.

“It absolutely made a difference. It’s helped sell numerous properties,” Mathews said.

He added that all 12 of the PBRB’s recommendations would have sold sooner, if GSA had heeded the board’s recommendation, and taken a portfolio approach to selling some of the properties — meaning GSA would sell some of the properties as a package deal.

“They took every property individually to sale — a much slower process. And it hasn’t worked, frankly, that well,” Mathews said. “Some properties still haven’t sold. They took a really important tool off the table, and just decided to go in alone. And that created a lot of frustration.”

As far as agency reluctance to offer up underutilized property, Mathews said they face challenges relocating federal employees from a property that’s marked for disposal.

“Agencies have to spend some money to go off of it. And the other big lesson is there should be some proceeds going to the agencies that are relocating sooner in the process rather than later in the process,” he said.

Peres said one of the biggest challenges is the lack of both incentives and resources for agencies to identify and prepare properties for disposal.

“To be successful, this transition will require upfront investments to improve building conditions in the assets that are long-term holds within GSA’s portfolio, and to move customer agencies out of the buildings that we intend to move towards disposition,” Peres said.

If everybody’s in charge, nobody’s in charge

Dong said that getting rid of federal real estate comes down to basic management principles — such as clear authority, clear accountability and a sense of urgency — and that the FASTA legislation added new, unfamiliar gears to the sale and disposal process.

“When we look at the FASTA legislation — and I know that hindsight is 20/20 — I actually think it made things worse,” Dong said.

“When GSA does a federal construction project, there’s a clear project management discipline that they bring, where there’s a project schedule, there’s a project timeline, there’s a project budget, and they do a pretty good job,” he added. “When they’re building a new courthouse, for example, they do a pretty good job of staying on time and within budget because you have that project management discipline that GSA has traditionally brought to these federal construction projects.”

However, Dong said that the same discipline doesn’t exist yet when it comes to getting rid of federal real estate.

“With these disposal projects, who knows when it’ll get done? You don’t have that same clear sense of what’s the plan and what’s the timeline. And as a result, if things get done, it takes way too long,” Dong said. “The government needs to send a message that it’s serious about getting something done. And that starts by putting some meaningful points on the board sooner rather than later — it’s been more than seven years.”

While FASTA and PBRB haven’t accomplished everything Congress envisioned, Dong said there’s room for improvement in GSA’s sale and disposal process.

If Congress decides to revisit FASTA, or pass new legislation to reform the way agencies get rid of excess federal property, Dong said measures to put clear accountability in place will make a difference.

“Who’s in charge of getting it done, as it relates to this task? It seems everybody’s in charge, so nobody’s in charge, and what you’re lacking here is a single throat to choke _— somebody who has both the authority and accountability to make things happen,” he said.

Next steps for PBRB

As lawmakers contemplate the next steps for the PBRB, Mathews recommended Congress pass legislation giving the board more authority and more resources to do its job.

“The board needs more authority to be effective. Right now, most of the decision-making power, frankly, lies with OMB. And so, if you have OMB fully invested in disposing of properties,  the way it’s set up now can be very successful. But if that’s not a real high priority for OMB, then it makes it very difficult for the board to actually move forward. So, you’ve got to take the board you have and to give them more authority over the decision-making process right now to make recommendations.”

Mathews said he also urges Congress to waive the Historic Preservation Act in the FASTA Reform Act.

“That is a real obstacle. It makes it unclear what a buyer can do with a lot of federal properties, because a lot of them are old, and that just creates uncertainty. The value of a property is really determined by the rights of what you can do with it. So, if you don’t know what you can do with it, then you don’t really know what it’s worth. So, it devalues the property, frankly,” he said.

While agencies have been reluctant to give up underutilized office space, Mathews said belt-tightening from Congress and increasingly austere annual budgets over the coming years might force some agencies to make some tough choices.

“If you’re an agency and you’re sitting on real estate that is 10% occupied, and now you’ve got an annual budget that you can’t fulfill all your priorities [with], you have to make some choices. What do you want to do? Do you want to cut your rent budget? Or are you going to want to cut your salary budget?  Most agencies will pick their people over empty buildings,” Mathews said.

An uncertain future

Current and former GSA officials say opportunities abound for agencies to give up office space they no longer need.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee last November that her agency is  “laser-focused on right-sizing the federal footprint.”

With agencies — including GSA — embracing the benefits of a long-term hybrid and remote workforce, Carnahan said her agency sees an opportunity to reduce the government’s real-estate footprint by up to 30% in the coming years.

“Right now, agencies across the government are rethinking how much space they actually need. And while GSA doesn’t make space decisions for agencies, we do work closely with them to leverage our team’s expertise to help agencies plan and whenever possible to downsize,” Carnahan told the committee.

GSA, however, also warns that a lack of funds to repair or maintain government buildings is limiting the opportunities it has to sell underutilized real estate.

Former PBS Commissioner Nina Albert told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last September that agencies, over nearly the past decade, missed as many as 120 opportunities to consolidate federal office space, “representing hundreds of millions in annual savings that have been missed due to lack of available funding.”

While agencies face opportunities to right-size the federal government’s property, it remains unclear what kind of space the federal government will prioritize in the future.

Mathews said the current federal building portfolio is roughly split in half, between owned and leased space.

“What’s it going to look like, five years from now? Or 10 years from now? Is it going to be 80% leased and 20% owned? Or is there going to be 20% leased and 80% owned? Or some number in between?” Mathews said. “That’s going to have a really big impact on [each] agency’s mission. — on the amount of capital the government is going to have to commit to federal real estate, because renovating buildings is really expensive. Or are they going to turn to the private sector to get higher quality buildings with shorter commitment terms through leasing? That’s going to be a really important strategic decision that GSA is going to have to make sometime soon — how do they get to a portfolio, in five years, that is smaller, higher quality, meets the agency’s requirements, and is financially sustainable for GSA? That’s a huge challenge.”

To further complicate these efforts, Hocker said the long-term prevalence of telework remains unclear — both in and out of government.

“We really don’t know, [and] the federal government’s in the same spot right now. We don’t know what commerce is going to do. We certainly don’t know what’s going to happen in the next administration, whenever that is,” Hocker said. “Do they share the workspace? Do we create workstations that are modular, so people can bring their computers in? And who pays for that? There’s a lot of questions that are being studied right now, and until we get these answers, we’re not going to have our arms around space utilization and the need for real estate.”

The post Federal buildings disposal board, nearing its end, still sees plenty of work ahead first appeared on Federal News Network.

When if comes to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), people sometimes forget that “I” word. Cyber topics seem to consume all of the oxygen these days. But physical infrastructure threats are also real and often connected to the cyber side. For more, the Federal Drive Host Tom Temin spoke with CISA’s Executive Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security, David Mussington.

Interview Transcript: 

Tom Temin I want to go back to your title, executive assistant director for infrastructure security. That’s a wide sounding type of portfolio that you have. And, you know, at the beginning of DHS, in the post 9/11 era, people worried about physical infrastructure, bridges, roads, and in fact, that’s something they should worry about. But the cyber piece in that component is increasingly part of the physical infrastructure process industries and so on, and vice versa, because even the cyber infrastructure has towers and wires and data centers and so forth. So how do you look at that? How do you really separate cyber and infrastructure in terms of the day-to-day oversight that you do?

David Mussington So, you know, increasingly and I should say that obviously it’s a team sport and there’s a cyber security, executive assistant director as well, Eric Goldstein. You know, the agency name really tells you how we do it. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency encompasses all hazards, risks to infrastructure function. That means physical threats, the terrorism, and counter-terrorism risks that you elaborated on at the beginning. And cyber threats, which are newer, which are due to the network nature of, physical systems. And the physical infrastructures that have a cyber layer attached to them. Think about a water and wastewater treatment system that is connected to the public internet, for example. And what would happen if you disrupt that cyber connectivity? Most of our critical infrastructure that way, from airports to pipelines to government facilities and government services. So, while human beings may live in physical buildings, they can make it over wires and over frequencies that are subject to disruption at the cyber part of it. The communications part of it, the physical part of it is still here. And we worry about bomb threats and, physical attacks and risks to physical facilities like churches and schools. All of that encompasses into the critical infrastructure risk challenge.

Tom Temin And from CISA and in dealing with CISA the cyber side gets all of the publicity. That’s all the releases coming out.

David Mussington Of the city. Not all, but much of it.

Tom Temin Yeah, maybe review for us what’s happening on the physical infrastructure protection side. And I’ll give you an example. Just from my own experience, I used to do a lot of running around the big reservoir in Central Park in New York City, and that was fenced off because it was a reservoir, the Jackie Onassis Reservoir. But I was always thinking somebody could come there in the night with a bucket of poison, get over that little fence and dump it in there or something like that. Physical security, or somebody climbing under the George Washington Bridge and doing something nefarious. What is CISA’s approach on that end of things?

David Mussington So what we do is we collaborate with the people who own those infrastructures, the assets themselves, and that’s mostly state and local governments. And to the extent the private sector, and we advise them and collaborate with them to make sure that the best protection is available or deployed to those locations. And that means fencing in the example you gave to keep people away from particularly vulnerable areas. It means advising them on the level of threat. So, if we have Intel information and we tell you that information about threats and challenges risks in the field, we collaborate and tell them about it. And we tell them about best practices that they can adopt to add layers of protection. We also make available our assessments of risk because we have a risk assessment program on the physical side where we were we assess dams, tunnels, bridges, etc., against categories of threat from explosive devices through physical threat from domestic violent extremists, for example. And we provide guidance on how best to protect and certainly out to liaise with first responders to make sure that if an incident should take place, that those assets can be protected as quickly and as viably as possible. So, its best practices advice, it’s assessments and it is engagement through our field force we have 1010 regions. And we take your security advisors. We provide security advice for how to secure particular facilities and critical infrastructure.

Tom Temin And some of the critical infrastructure a fair amount is privately owned.

David Mussington Most commonly articulated statistic is over 80%. The great majority that’s, I think, a safe generalization.

Tom Temin And do you find that there are differing levels of willingness to cooperate across different sectors.

David Mussington So over the 20 years or more that I’ve worked on this topic, I think that I’ve seen it go from grudging collaboration to a much more acceptance of the shared risk between the public and the private sector, and a level of trust between CISA and private critical infrastructure operators that they recognize the threat and they’re willing to collaborate with us to lower the risk. In at least attempt to talk about the risk in a way that wasn’t true a decade ago. So, I’m pretty optimistic when it comes to that.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Dr David Mussington. He’s executive assistant director for infrastructure security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Just out of curiosity, tell us about how you came to this type of work. You’ve taught it, you’ve practiced it, and now you, I guess, practice and oversee it.

David Mussington All right. So, I’ve been here since the beginning of this administration, I was appointed in February of 2021. Prior to that, I was the university professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I taught on homeland security and critical infrastructure resilience. Long career from Rand Corporation to doing post-doctoral work at Harvard on national security threats. And this is just sort of the domain area where I specialized for a while on the cyber and the physical side of the house.

Tom Temin And getting back to risks to physical infrastructure. One of them is lack of maintenance. And we’ve seen that often. Well, both public and private bridges do fall once in a while in the United States, land on the highway below this kind of thing. And I think of like radio towers, which are privately owned, that are really tall. If they ever flipped over, lord knows what they would hit on the way down. Does CISA mission bridge over into best practices and shared information on keeping things just in good repair as a part of security.

David Mussington A couple of things about that. First, it’s mostly about how those vulnerabilities can be exploited to negative to negative effect. So as an all-hazards agency, we focus on the fragility of infrastructure, of course. And if infrastructure fails then there can be security and risk consequences. So that’s probably one of the oldest focus points of CISA. A different focus is when weak or vulnerable infrastructure can be exploited by bad actors, and those bad actors can know where vulnerabilities are less likely to be remediated and can choose those times and places of their choosing to back down. And we worry about a lot about that to the extent of strengthening weaker infrastructure. You know, we leverage things like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 that programed billions of dollars to improve the physical shape of infrastructure. That infrastructure can be rebuilt, internalizing standards of best practice and protection that are new to protect against older risks. So, we’ll provide advice on how to rebuild infrastructure to make it stronger and more resilient. That’s our principal injection point into this.

Tom Temin And does this work extend even further back, say, into the engineering and construction of new infrastructure that could be done differently.

David Mussington Because, we have principles like secure by design and secure by default, where we try and make sure the security standards and best practices for construction on the cyber and physical side are included in the design of newer infrastructure. So, the newer infrastructure will be more resilient than the infrastructure it replaces. So that’s what that’s part of it.

Tom Temin And having a broad overview of this, is there any particular sector. And I know you love them all equally, but one that you feel this is the one I’d like to see have the most advancement in.

David Mussington I will defer picking on a particular infrastructure, but I will say that everyone can improve. And I think that, IIJA that infrastructure investment, jobs that I mentioned, programs, potential improvements across a myriad of infrastructures, all of which, are venues where security standards and practices can be deployed, and we can end up with a much stronger set of resilient infrastructure than we have right now.

The post Don’t forget the ‘I’ in the nation’s premier infrastructure protection agency first appeared on Federal News Network.

A six-year experiment meant to help the federal government quickly sell or dispose of its underutilized real estate is running out of time.

Congress created the Public Buildings Reform Board as a small, independent agency under the 2016 Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA), to help the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, identify federal buildings and properties that agencies no longer need, and to sell or repurpose them.

In fiscal 2022, the 24 largest federal agencies owned nearly a quarter million buildings, covering more than 2.4 billion square feet, according to the latest GSA data. That portfolio of owned buildings accounts for more than $16 billion in annual costs.

The federal footprint of owned buildings has steadily decreased over the past decade. But the Government Accountability Office says agencies holding onto excess and underutilized office space is one of the main reasons it’s kept federal real property management on its High-Risk List since 2003.

The PBRB got started in 2019. In those early days, its backers compared the scope of the board’s work to the controversial Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) that shook up the Defense Department’s footprint of military bases across the country.

Members of the board, so far, have given the Office of Management and Budget three rounds of recommendations. Along the way, OMB blocked the board-recommended sale of a National Archives and Records Administration facility in Seattle, after tribal governments sued the Biden administration over the site’s disposal.

The board also lost, and then regained a quorum in 2022.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic created uncertainty over what space agencies still deemed underutilized. It also kicked off an ongoing conversation about the future workforce for federal employees, and changed expectations of how often a telework-adept workforce needs to be in the office.

Under the FASTA, the board will disband in May 2025. But current and former federal real estate experts say the board’s work has grown exponentially, and in unimaginable ways from when lawmakers first passed the legislation.

Those experts — while mixed on the PBRB’s results to date — say the federal government faces a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shed underutilized property, after the pandemic gave the federal workforce greater flexibility to telework. Now they’re pushing Congress to reauthorize the PBRB, and to expand its authorities to take on this work.

A ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’

PBRB members, at their last public meeting last September, gave measured praise to their work to date, but also expressed frustration with the hurdles they’ve encountered to get this far, and the challenges that remain.

Among their challenges, board members say agencies aren’t forthcoming with providing data on underutilized or excess property, and that GSA’s real estate data, as captured in the Federal Real Property Profile, gives an incomplete picture of what space is actually underutilized.

“Just because it’s underutilized in the database doesn’t mean it’s ready for repurposing,” Paul Walden, the board’s executive director, said in an interview.

Meanwhile, OMB rejected a whole slate of recommendations from the PBRB in January 2022, on the grounds that it was “unable to conclude that the risks to the government posed by the disposition of the proposed properties are acceptable to the taxpayer.”

Members of the board, so far, have given OMB two rounds of recommendations. Its third, and final round of recommendations, is due December 2024.

Board member Talmage Hocker, founder of a private real estate firm in Lexington, Kentucky, said at the PBRB’s Sept. 28, 2023 meeting that that agency, since the COVID-19 pandemic,  faces an “extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the federal government to right-size its portfolio.”

Hocker added that, “given the low occupancy of federal property, stronger leadership is needed from OMB and GSA” to accelerate the pace of consolidation efforts.

“We have some buildings that are 10% utilized — that means 90% empty — and we can’t get people to work with us to consolidate these buildings,” he said.

The benefit of doing so, he added, will be reduced costs, better offices for federal employees and reduced utility costs across the federal government.

As of September 2023, GSA has sold 10 of 12 properties from its “high-value asset” round of recommendations, and received $194 million in proceeds. But members of the board say there are plenty more opportunities to sell excess federal real estate.

Board member David Winstead, a former commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, estimated about a 40% vacancy rate of office buildings in D.C.

“We really continue to try to seek ways in which to incentivize agencies to consider more rapid consolidation, working with GSA … and trying to create incentives to do that,” Winstead said.

Former Rep. Michael Capuano (D-N.J.), another member of the board, said it’s clear that agencies have more office than they need. He cited GSA’s own downtown D.C. headquarters as a prime example of underutilized office space.

Data from GAO shows GSA’s headquarters had an 11% utilization rate in early 2023.

“You could throw a bowling ball down the hall, and not a single person will be hit. This is not because they’re screwing off. It’s because they’re home working, in the field working. There are no people to populate the space,” Capuano said. “Those people are doing their job, they just aren’t doing it from a desk like they usually do. I don’t know if that’s going to change, but I do know it’s an incredible, immense, massive waste of taxpayer dollars, a waste of opportunity.”

While PBRB members see plenty of opportunities to right-size federal real property, members of the board fear the federal government, as a whole, isn’t moving fast enough to seize on this window of opportunity.

The $194 million in the proceeds from the high-value asset round, so far, fall far short of the board’s sales target of $500-$700 million, according to a 2021 GAO report.

PBRB expected its following round of recommendations in December 2021, once sold by GSA, would bring in about $2.5 billion in total proceeds, but OMB rejected the board’s list in its entirety.

“We have a unique opportunity to reduce the footprint of the federal government,” said board member Jeff Gural, a New York real estate developer. “We’re going to look like fools if we don’t.”

Pandemic ‘added momentum’ to right-size real estate footprint

With the Biden administration focused on bringing more federal employees back to the office, it remains unclear if PBRB missed its window to offload underutilized office space, or how close the board will reach its financial targets before it sunsets in May 2025.

Walden said in an interview that efforts to shrink the federal real estate footprint have been in the works for more than a decade, and that a hybrid federal workforce increases opportunities to reduce office space.

Under the Obama administration, the OMB in 2013 issued a “Freeze the Footprint” initiative aimed at reducing a year-over-year increase in agency-leased and owned office space. Subsequent administrations have built on those plans, and focused on shrinking federal office space.

“COVID just added momentum to that,” Walden said. “Agencies are still looking at downsizing [and] consolidating; this has just added fuel to the fire. But as far as definite plans, it’s too early to say, because there’s sensitivity when you talk about moving an employee’s work location. I don’t think the agencies are at the point where they can really discuss that too much openly.

Federal agencies see less need for office space — but private-sector businesses are also shedding offices.

Former Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.V.), another PBRB member, said large corporations are downsizing their office space at a historic pace, “as it becomes clear that the workforce will not return to a five-day-a-week office routine.”

Rahall said that agency reluctance to sell underutilized space, plus a “lack of preparedness to seize the opportunities of this moment and lack of leadership on the part of OMB and GSA … are resulting in a sluggish response simply not felt in a commercial real estate market.”

“It’s obvious to the board that the federal government is not meeting the moment as efficiently as it should, or as it could,” Rahall said.

Renewed focus

Despite the board’s challenges, agencies and Congress have renewed their focus on right-sizing federal real estate.

GSA announced last November that it’s putting 23 additional properties through its disposal process.

That’s a much higher volume of properties than what the agency put through this process last fiscal year, and sets a higher bar for what GSA expects to offload in the coming years. Next steps include selling, transferring or exchanging them to another federal agency, or state or local government or to the public.

The same day as GSA’s announcement, members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee introduced a slew of bills focused on agencies selling or making better use of its underutilized office space.

One of the bills, the FASTA Reform Act, would extend the termination date of the PBRB to Dec. 31, 2026, and would give the board additional authority.

“The process has not worked as originally envisioned,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chairman of the committee’s panel that oversees public buildings, said last November during a markup of his bill.

A few days later, OMB Deputy Director Nani Coloretti pushed for a renewed focus on right-sizing the federal real estate portfolio at a meeting of the Federal Real Property Association.

“Within two days, you got the three key players — Congress, OMB and GSA — all saying disposal is important and they want to create more authorities to do it,” former PBS Commissioner Dan Mathews, who was appointed a member of the PBRB in February, said in an interview. “I’m optimistic —  they’re going to get more authority. GSA is going to get more involved. OMB seems to be focused on it.”

Lawmakers took action yet again this week. Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) introduced similar legislation on Wednesday. Their bill would also extend PBRB’s end date to December 2026.

Keeping unneeded federal buildings open for no reason is costing American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. It’s ridiculous and must be fixed,” Cramer said in a statement.

The Congressional Research Service, in a November 2022 report, found federal agencies owned 7,697 vacant buildings and 2,265 partially vacant buildings.

“Abandoned and unused federal buildings are an eyesore for communities, yet too often, bureaucratic red tape makes it difficult for federal agencies to sell these buildings—even when a community could find a better use for them,” Kelly said.

‘High-value’ properties are selling

Flavio Peres, GSA’s assistant commissioner of real property disposition, said the agency received $194 million for selling 10 of 12 properties on the board’s high-value asset list of recommendations. The proceeds of those sales, he added, are 10% higher than GSA’s internal appraisals for the properties.

“Obviously, COVID had a big impact on real estate markets,” Peres said at the PBRB’s September meeting.

The properties, previously owned by seven different agencies, account for about 4 million square feet of federal building space. The board recommended the sale of these buildings as part of its “High-Value Asset” round  — one of three rounds of recommendations required under FASTA.

These GSA-sold properties include Pacific Point in Auburn, Washington, which previously served as the Social Security Administration’s main processing center on the West Coast.

The 1.5 million square foot property covers 11 buildings. But Peres said some of the warehouses on the site were in “unoccupiable” condition, and required significant investment to rehabilitate.

“That really showed the benefits of FASTA and PBRB, where we had funds to move these agencies, in order to make the project viable,” Peres said.

GSA also sold a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility in Pacific Grove, California. Peres said GSA and PBRB worked with tribal governments, as well as members of Congress, looking to preserve a mural on the former NOAA building.

Two federal properties from PBRB’s “high-value” list remain on the market.

GSA is still trying to sell the Laguna Nigel Federal Building in Orange County, California. Peres said the agency set a minimum bid of $70 million for the 92-acre property, but “we did not get anybody to jump in at that value.”

GSA is also still trying to sell a Coast Guard facility in Menlo Park, California. Peres said the Coast Guard planned to move personnel to the nearby Moffett Federal Airfield, but that the planned move was delayed because of the pandemic.

Peres said the site requires decommissioning, including environmental cleanup, but added that GSA expects to sell the property in early 2025.

“Their move got delayed, and those delays did cause a ripple effect on the timing of this sale. Because the move got delayed, the decommissioning got delayed,” Peres said.

The post Agencies face ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to sell real estate they don’t need. Will it happen? first appeared on Federal News Network.

Technology is often at the forefront of these efforts, and these systems are quickly becoming outdated and ineffective. According to one Federal News Network analysis, existing security systems and cameras are in various states of disrepair, requiring a strategic plan “to repair, replace and even install security cameras and alarm systems as part of a nationwide assessment.”

In an era of heightened risk of attacks on government properties and the increase in mass violence incidents, this isn’t just a passive directive. It is an urgent priority, especially with the 2024 election cycle just around the corner.

Unfortunately, government agencies and organizations are too often slow to adopt new technologies, as a lack of knowledge or fidelity to existing guidelines stifles innovation and diminishes potential outcomes.

We can do better.

It’s time for a digital transformation in our federal building security apparatus. In particular, as the age of artificial intelligence comes more fully to fruition, we have the opportunity to leverage this technology to prioritize efficiency without compromising efficacy.

Elevating security without compromising convenience

AI security solutions can automate defense mechanisms, increase the speed and efficiency of threat detection, and enhance manual intervention.

Many of these technologies allow buildings to maintain a natural traffic flow, ensuring safety without causing unnecessary congestion, anxiety or inconvenience for those passing through them. With more than 1.4 million employees and visitors entering federal buildings daily, elevating security without compromising convenience is critical.

However, existing solutions, like metal detectors or manual pat downs, require people to empty their pockets and undergo thorough checks and clog corridors, creating discomfort, annoyance and a sense of being treated suspiciously. More importantly, those solutions give a false sense of security depending on metal detectors being 100% accurate and assume zero social engineering – the use of psychological manipulation to trick someone into making security mistakes – on behalf of the threat actor. These technologies are not 100% perfect and threat actors will always look for ways to subvert humans.

Instead, the goal is to implement security measures that effectively identify potential threats (like weapons) but are discreet enough not to disrupt the normal flow of activities. For instance, advanced AI-driven systems accurately detect guns, knives and other threats, reducing confrontations and improving entry speed. They also take the social engineering equation out of the loop as divestment is no longer the key to identifying threats.

Existing manual processes are straining resources as agencies look to level up their security footprint to account for emerging threat patterns. When AI-powered security solutions protect federal buildings, agencies maintain a defensive posture even when budget constraints (or more frequent budget showdowns) put building security at risk.

Of course, these technologies alone won’t make federal buildings more secure. When they work in tandem with security personnel and established processes to augment and enhance a team’s capabilities, they can do more even as potential threats continue to escalate.

Ethical, secure AI is critical

If AI will elevate security, we must ensure it does so without bias.

Specifically, the development of AI systems must be underpinned by robust and diverse training data to avoid any unintended prejudicial outcomes. For example, training needs to determine threats, not classify gender or ethnicity. This means training models with all kinds of people while ensuring the threats stay the same and compiling training data from different locations/regions.

Similarly, as the technology evolves, it’s crucial to ensure that AI operates without bias on weapons. More specifically, weapons are always evolving, and those threats must be continuously added to the data that training models use.

It’s also important to consider and prioritize how threats vary by region. Benign objects must also be introduced by what people in a given region/location usually wear.

Simply put, safe, effective AI can elevate security, but it requires intentional and strategic training to maximize its greatest assets and minimize potential drawbacks.

New security solutions protect against a novel threat landscape

As we navigate a landscape of evolving threats and heightened security needs, integrating AI-driven solutions in federal facilities is not just a forward-thinking move but a necessary evolution.

It’s time to move beyond the solutions to past problems, utilizing the latest innovations and operational efficiencies to make buildings (and our people) safer than ever.

This shift towards AI-enabled security systems represents a proactive step in safeguarding our nation’s federal facilities, ensuring that they remain accessible and secure without compromise.

With an election cycle on the horizon, now is the time to make these meaningful upgrades to our security footprint.

Joshua Douglas, senior vice president for product and engineering at Xtract One Technologies, is a recognized expert in the fields of behavioral analytics, cybersecurity and physical security working within schools, healthcare, government, critical infrastructure and commercial business.

The post The role of AI in federal facility safety first appeared on Federal News Network.

Very few topics raise the temperature of federal employees as much as changes to their office space.

The loud talker next to you.

The person’s whose daily tuna sandwich smell permeates the office.

The traffic, the cost of gas or the metro, and the overall hassle of having to make your way into the office after many people realized the benefits and enjoyment of telework.

Yes, there are many tens of thousands of federal employees who have been going to the office every day for the past almost four years, but even they can be exasperated by others coming back to their once quiet sanctuary.

Add to that, the Biden administration’s push for federal employees to return to the office, emotions ratchet up further when it comes to where you sit and work every day.

We can debate the value, the necessity and even the stupidity of forcing employees, public or private sector, back to the office for a specific period of time during their work week.

Office space must be agile, flexible

But what we all can agree on is that change is inevitable for your office space. The technology, the furniture and the overall configurations are part of the constant upheaval we all experience in our lives.

“One trend that we’re seeing, and I think is going to remain, is that the work and workspaces need to remain agile and flexible to address the current environment we’re in. And we need to manage that ever-changing environment,” said Chuck Hardy, the chief architect at the General Services Administration, in an interview with Federal News Network. “This makes managing the surge vitally important and properly planning spaces. I think agencies are learning that, but more directly, it’s sending that message that you don’t build space for your busiest time of the year. Instead, you build it for the mean and have solutions in place like federal co-working, like commercial co-working or like telework that effectively and efficiently absorb those surges.”

Flexibility to have seamless meetings where some people are in person and others are on video. The agility to work in a group of three or four for a short period, but then go heads down by yourself for a few hours.

Agencies need to make their employees’ office experience more than a desk, a chair and a computer.

Hardy said the lessons learned from the first year of GSA’s Workplace Innovation Lab is demonstrating more than what is possible, but what really works.

“I think a trend that’s going to last as well is proper acoustical design. With the increase in hybrid meetings going on in the office and alongside the individual solo work, well designed acoustics is essential,” he said. “Not only from the furniture side, where you’re seeing a lot more soft surfaces, the technology that provides noise dampening, technology that makes conversations more audible are among those solutions agencies are seeing that probably weren’t in place two years ago or three years ago, and are now solving some of the concerns people may have about office environment.”

GSA lab aims for seamless experience

When GSA launched the test site in January 2023, former Public Building Service Commissioner Nina Albert said it was “for people to return to office and to re-experience the benefits of shared culture, idea exchange and camaraderie. What you’re going to see are innovations in furniture solutions, innovations in conferencing, how really can we experience hybrid in a way that feels seamless and effortless as opposed to a burden.”

In the year since Albert, who left her role last October, outlined those goals, Hardy said GSA’s Workplace Innovation Lab (WIL) has received positive feedback from its users.

Hardy said the lab has conducted over 300 tours with over 7,000 federal employees, which came from over 100 different agencies or bureaus. There are about 1,800 registered users on the lab’s website, which are the employees who can book reservations for desks or meeting rooms. He said in the first year, the lab has received 4,200 individual desk and over 3,900 meeting room reservations.

“We’re getting feedback and input from these folks and 90% of the top 10 rooms reserved for people suggesting that the will was a valuable resource for federal agency teams to collaborate. I’m happy to say the feedback about the WIL has been overwhelmingly positive customer experience rating of the will is 4.3 out of 5,” Hardy said. “With many folks providing us good feedback along the way, we’re also seeing 85% of the users really want to see the WIL keep going. We’re going to do that. Overall, some agencies use a space for offsite meetings. Some use it for helping drive change in their organizations to get people to broaden their perspectives, and others to experience what offerings are out there to help meet their missions.”

The feedback from those 1,800 registered users — GSA doesn’t charge agencies to use the WIL, but does ask for them to complete a survey in return — has turned into lessons learned and improvements.

Hardy said, for example, GSA and its partner vendors have made improvements around the acoustics of the office spaces.

“From the start, we had, for lack of a better way to characterize them, some phone booths that were sound-controlled rooms that you could go into. There were one-person booths and there were four-person booths. We have been letting agencies know about, and having the conversations with agencies about, the cost effectiveness of providing a furniture solution for a sound-controlled environment that can be moved and can be plugged into the wall. But if you don’t need this location, you can pick it up and move it someplace else,” he said. “These things can start to solve some of these mixed scenarios that will go on in the office where the person next to you is on a webinar or a call where he or she is talking out loud, or you have a loud talker that’s just on the phone with somebody, a solution like that where they can step away from their desk area, walk into that booth, have that half hour call, and then walk back to the desk and conduct business. It’s both cost effective and efficient for the business lines that we’re dealing with.”

Lab to expand office space test

Hardy added several vendors swapped out technology or furniture based on user feedback as well such as the ability to have multiple virtual meeting technologies that are used across government on the startup screens, making meetings, really just one click away.

“We had some folks asked about the accessibility of those since the start of the world today. Those manufacturers are already addressing the accessibility issues in those in those booths,” he said. “So it’s good to see that we’re not only signaling changes that need to be made in their offerings, but the furniture vendors in the industry is actually responding with solutions.”

As GSA continues its Workplace 2030 test bed, Hardy said his team will focus on a few changes based on agency feedback. The customer surveys become more important as GSA sees an opportunity to reduce the government’s real-estate footprint by up to 30% in the coming years as about half of GSA’s leases are set to expire within the next five years.

Hardy said one big change is the lab is expanding to the top floor of GSA headquarters in Washington.

“We’re keeping one of the three areas that we’ve had on the second floor fully operational. We do that because we wanted to make sure that we were still continuing to serve the federal population in in DC while we’re going through some of these changes,” he said. “On the seventh floor we are going to broaden the scope of the workplace research we’re doing in addition to a strong partnership with technology and the furniture industry. It’s also going to demonstrate some low-cost changes to workplaces that could reap benefits for our end users. For example, how can we take workplace change and achieve it reusing some of the existing furniture we already have?”

With budgets expected to be limited to non-existent for agencies to buy new furniture, Hardy said the idea of the seventh floor lab is to show agencies what they can do to rearrange or reconfigure the furniture to be more agile and flexible.

“As we continue to go forward, it will continue to be this advanced research program for GSA around furniture, technology and workplace that will constantly feed us information from our clients’ needs and our end users’ needs. And what we should be leaning forward into developing as product lines for us,” Hardy said. “What’s nice about the seventh floor is there is an open space on the outside that goes out to an area that does have WiFi and so we now have a location that people can have meetings inside of space and outside on a rooftop. That shows the effective and efficient use of space, sometimes gets forgotten and used only during lunch and on breaks. But this is something that you could actually go out there and have meetings and do things. So there is a lot of opportunity up there on our top floor.”

GSA’s Workplace Innovation Lab will not solve many all the problems, concerns or even grumpiness of the return-to-office mandate. But it does have the potential to make office space more comfortable, meet employees’ needs more easily, and maybe most importantly, make the overall experience less painful for those dreading coming back to the office.

The post As you return to the office, the office space must evolve first appeared on Federal News Network.

It turned out to be an insightful view of how one agency is dealing with the post pandemic telework period. I spoke with Margie Rowe, the chief administrative officer of the directorate. Here’s how she described her job: “I take care of the facilities, the fleet, the mail, the personal property; part of keeping S&T running.”

S&T operates five labs throughout the Northeast U.S. Headquarters relocated to the DHS main campus in July. It occupies part of a new building attached to the original Saint E.’s structure, but with its own entrance. S&T had occupied space on Vermont Avenue in Northwest D.C., then briefly at 7th and D Streets NW. Rowe warned me all I would see is what she termed a cubicle farm, and that’s what I saw. She said about 10% to 15% of the headquarters staff comes in on a given day. Most of the cubes were empty.

More striking, none of them contained a single one of the personal items you normally see when touring cubicle farms — family photos, candy dishes, little potted plants, sports knickknacks, ratty sweater draped on the chair. Why? No one has an assigned cubicle. Everybody “hotels,” to use the vernacular. People reserve a spot to work for the days they come in.

In moving, the Science and Technology Directorate reduced its square footage, Rowe said, because it anticipated people would no longer work in the office en masse. At the labs, people mostly come in because they can’t do lab work from home. Last year I visited the Directorate’s Transportation Security Lab on the outskirts of the Atlantic City airport. One large room where researchers examine explosive materials looked like a cartoon version of a laboratory — boiling flasks, all sorts of piping, test tubes, Bunsen burners. Another room contained several experimental baggage screening machines. Clearly not telework situations.

In the old headquarters offices, Rowe said, “Everybody had their own office, everybody had all cabinets of paper.” While there, the COVID also moved in. “So we got people to go virtual. We worked with the CIO [office], installed Teams. So that allows us to do collaboration. And we reduced our footprint, so that we do a reservation system.”

DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dimitri Kusnezov and his immediate staff have a permanent space. Security, facilities, personal property and computer help desk people also have space of their own. Different people perform receptionist duties throughout the week. But even Rowe teleworks and, despite her seniority, reserves a cube.

The archetype of an entry level job might be the mail clerk, the young person pushing a wheeled bin of paper through the halls. I asked Rowe if physical mail even comes in to virtual offices any more.

“You would be surprised,” she said. “Yes. We have mail that comes in every day.” She said S&T doesn’t have its own mail delivery people, though. That’s handled by DHS centrally since the office of the secretary lies upstairs and to the northwest of the S&T location.

Telework means people must come in if they want a printout. DHS disallows official documents flowing to personal printers in people’s homes, Rowe said.

I’ve always wondered about phones. Boomers like me who haven’t yet taken the cue to retire remember when phones all had a strictly physical location, and people mostly answered them. Rowe said her DHS corporate number rings through to Microsoft Teams on her cell phone.

Add it all up, and somehow at least this crucial federal component does fine, the incomprehensible April 2023 White House memo on telework notwithstanding.

In general, and perhaps not surprisingly, Rowe said the “lonely” days occur on Mondays and Fridays, although Director Kusnezov sometimes holds all-hands days. Science and Technology policy calls for staff to work in the office two days per pay period, or an average of one day a week. Contractor employees make up 60% of the 1,000 headquarters people who, in theory, could show up on the same day.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By: Michele Sandiford

St. Elizabeths is divided into two campuses. St. Elizabeths East campus was established by Congress in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane.

Source: Government Accountability Office

The post Telework redux: A day in the life of one D.C. office first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Interior Department is the latest agency to gain attention from members of Congress over its telework and return-to-office policies for federal employees.

Mark Green, Interior’s chief human capital officer, defended the department’s stance on telework during a House Natural Resources committee hearing Thursday.

“We believe the hybrid workforce model that we’re operating in now is one that works for the department,” Green told lawmakers during the hearing. “In fact, for the department to remain competitive for the talent we need in the future, especially in mission support occupations, we believe it’s essential that we continue to offer telework and remote work.”

But several Republican committee members pressed harder on Interior’s telework posture, saying that it was leading to performance issues and preventing the agency from fully meeting the public’s needs. Members, for instance, blamed increased telework for what they said was a “massive” backlog of projects at the National Park Service, a component of the Interior Department.

“I recognize that telework and remote work can be useful in limited and well-defined circumstances,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), the subcommittee’s chairman, said during the hearing. “However, DOI has abused their excessive telework and remote work policies for employees.”

Green, on the other hand, said telework supports recruitment, retention, satisfaction and engagement of Interior employees.

“We’re not seeing any individual employee performance issues,” Green said.

Additionally, officials testifying at the hearing pointed to telework as a major recruitment benefit for many components of the Interior Department, including the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Dawn Locke, director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office, said since offering telework, Interior’s pool of applicants has broadened, and they have better skillsets to choose from among job applicants.

“While recruitment and retention had improved, not every position was suitable for telework because they had to be in person,” Locke said during the hearing. “But even if they offered one day a pay period to telework, when those individuals who normally have to be in person just had to do administrative stuff by behind the computer, that was beneficial to them.”

Given the nature of the work, Interior has relatively limited opportunities for telework, Green said. Less than half of Interior’s workforce is eligible for telework to begin with. Many Interior employees are in public-facing positions, working on public lands, recreation areas, parks and wildlife refuges, all of which require consistently on-site work.

“Because of the type of work they do, these employees are generally not eligible for regular telework,” Green said.

Overall, 65% of Interior’s employees nationwide are currently working in person every day. But similar to many large departments, Interior’s approach to telework is not one-size-fits-all. For instance, at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, another component of the Interior Department, about 80% of the staff works entirely in person.

Interior employees who can telework are working, for instance, in information technology, human resources, acquisition management and financial management. In these cases, Green said offering telework is important to be able to retain staff when competing against other potential employers.

These employees “possess highly portable skills and are in very high demand in both the public and private sectors,” Green said.

Additionally, telework has resulted in increased performance in many areas of the department, Green said.

“We’re seeing higher levels of retention of our employees and better scores on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey around employee engagement,” Green told lawmakers. “The tools [and technology] that we have now allows for managers and employees to stay connected and work together, so job satisfaction is actually even higher.”

Employees’ satisfaction in government has broader impacts too, said Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the House subcommittee’s ranking member.

“Workplace satisfaction is not just a matter of people being happy in their jobs,” Stansbury said. “It’s a matter of national security. It’s a matter of the federal government being able to carry out its mission. And it’s the ability to actually serve the public in all of the different things that the department does.”

But for Interior, those eligible for telework will soon see their options become more limited. For feds located in the national capital region, Interior mandated all non-bargaining unit employees to soon work in person more frequently. Starting Feb. 11, these employees will have to work in the office or on-site at least 50% of the time. Back in September 2023, Interior’s telework-eligible senior executives, supervisors and managers in the national capital region also began working in the office at least half of the time.

“Taking these steps will ensure that over 70% of the employees in the national capital region will be working in person at greater rates,” Green said.

Interior plans to apply the same return-to-office standards to unionized employees but must first complete negotiations with union leaders before proceeding with any potential changes, according to a recent all-staff email from Interior Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis.

“This change was part of important and necessary steps to increase meaningful in-person engagement and keep Interior in the strongest possible position to continue to deliver excellent results for our stakeholders, partners and the American people,” Daniel-Davis said.

More broadly, GAO has said telework is an important tool for the federal workforce, but in the same breath cautioned that telework must be implemented appropriately to work well. There are a few potential challenges with telework, such as managing office space and dealing with limitations in technology.

“What I want to make very clear regarding these challenges is that they could be mitigated if agencies follow key practices that provide a roadmap for successfully implementing telework programs,” Locke said during the hearing.

Those key practices can include, for instance, having a dedicated telework office to provide oversight, ensuring appropriate technology for those working from home and having evaluation plans to make course corrections where needed.

Telework for agencies can also support office space reduction and provide cost savings for agencies, GAO has found. Additionally, it can improve recruitment and retention, and offer an opportunity to better balance work and family demands.

GAO itself has maintained a flexible telework policy and seen many benefits as a result.

“We assess the suitability of each position at GAO to determine if those positions could telework [while having] no impact on our performance,” Locke said. “In fact, in 2023, we exceeded our savings by $20 billion in a telework status.”

Agency human capital leaders have also said they see telework as a way to help address skills gaps in the federal workforce, GAO said in a report on Interior’s telework policies, published Thursday.

Skills gaps appear when an agency doesn’t have the right skills on staff — or enough staff members in the first place — to most effectively meet its mission.

The Interior Department, like many agencies, has been grappling with skills gaps for decades. Strategic human capital management has remained on GAO’s high-risk list since 2001.

It has remained on the high-risk list for so long “partially because of the need to address current and emerging skills gaps that are undermining agencies’ abilities to meet their missions,” GAO said in the report.

“Effective implementation of telework policies and procedures could help improve talent management shortfalls, which is often how agencies experience skills gaps,” GAO added.

Still, Congress members’ continuous investigations into federal telework policies do not appear to be going away anytime soon. Many House Republicans are continuing to push agencies for more accurate telework data on the numbers of teleworking employees, the impacts on productivity and more.

The subcommittee hearing was another in a long line from House Republicans pressing agencies on their telework and return-to-office policies. The Oversight and Accountability committee has similarly held multiple hearings digging into the telework policies for a host of agencies.

During Thursday’s hearing, Gosar called for the enactment of the SHOW UP Act, a Republican-led bill that cleared the House in early 2023. If enacted, the legislation would return the federal workforce to its pre-pandemic telework status and significantly reduce telework opportunities for employees.

“It is time for DOI to return to more appropriate pre-pandemic levels of telework and remote work, so that staff will have a stronger workplace culture, working in person,” Gosar said. “House Republicans have put forward the solution to the in-person absenteeism of federal employees — the SHOW UP Act. I urge the Senate to take up this legislation so we can get back to business here in D.C.”

The post Telework ‘essential’ to remaining a competitive employer, Interior official tells Congress first appeared on Federal News Network.

The FAA expects telework-eligible employees with approved telework agreements will report in person to their official worksite for an average of four days each two-week pay period, starting Jan. 28.

The agency revised its return-to-office expectations, after getting pushback last summer from the unions that represent the FAA workforce.

The FAA previously announced its employees would return to the office at least three days per week — or six days per pay period — starting on Oct. 9, 2023.

In a Nov. 28, 2023 email sent to all employees, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, Deputy Administrator Katie Thomson and more than a dozen senior executives stated the new policy reflects focus groups with FAA managers and talks with union officials.

“While some advocated for increased on-site presence to foster consistent and meaningful collaboration, others stated that leveraging current workplace flexibilities will enhance workforce recruitment,” the email states. “All agreed that building and maintaining a high-performing workforce of dedicated employees and having FAA continue to be a great place to work remain our top priorities.”

An FAA spokeswoman confirmed the agency’s revised return-to-office plans in an email Wednesday.

Many federal employees began heading back to the office more regularly last fall, and some agencies are preparing employees to work in person more often in early 2024.

The Office of Management and Budget directed agencies last year to increase “meaningful” in-office work.

White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, in an email to agency leaders last August, urged the federal government to “aggressively execute” a shift toward more in-person work, starting in fall 2023.

The FAA is setting four days in the office per pay period as a baseline for its workforce, but the agency is giving frontline managers the discretion to set in-office expectations for their employees.

“We are providing managers with guidance to ensure the decisions they make about telework agreements focus on mission, operational, and business needs and follow applicable collective bargaining agreements and policy provisions,” the email from FAA leadership states.

FAA leaders also wrote that the agency will continue to work with its labor partners, “and follow all contractual and statutory obligations.”

FAA leaders said a greater in-person presence “allows the FAA to deliver consistently on our growing and evolving mission and to develop the workforce to meet future demands.”

“We commit to continuously assessing our organizational health and ability to meet our evolving priorities. We will remain agile and adjust our posture as operational requirements dictate,” they wrote.

Unions representing FAA employees, however, continue to push back on the agency’s return-to-office plans.

Dave Spero, national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS), a union that represents 11,000 FAA employees, told Federal News Network in a statement that its collective bargaining agreements require telework requests to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and that any decision must be based on business needs.

“A one-size-fits-all, mandatory four-day-per-pay-period requirement is not supported by our CBAs since different operations call for different telework arrangements,” Spero wrote.

“The CBAs set up rules to ensure that any telework arrangements, regardless of the number of telework days or in-person days, meet the agency’s mission needs. Those CBAs remain in full force and effect,” he added.

Jamil Kabbara, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) International Local 1653, said frontline managers may feel pressure from FAA leadership to bring more employees back to the office — and may not have the latitude to set in-person work expectations on a case-by-case basis.

“I know for a fact some of their directors feel that the mission failed because of telework,” Kabbara said. “They have that old mentality, yet they fail to look at and recognize maybe their process and procedures that were written way back needs to be updated — because now there’s a new paradigm.”

AFSCME Local 1653 represents 2,000 FAA employees, including lawyers, economists and aircraft certification engineers.

“The four days [per pay period] is better than the six days, no question about it. It’s a slight improvement,” Kabbara said about the FAA’s revised policy. “But the concern I have is that the agency still did not take the message, and they did not put out a plan, in my opinion, in how to really, truly implement it.”

Kabbara said the union remains concerned with the FAA’s return to office policy, and that agency leadership has offered “no clear vision” on how a greater in-office presence will improve productivity.

“I am concerned by the lack of vision and lack of plan that could cause mass confusion, and that may lead to more grievances. It’s not in the best interest of either the agency or the union to file those grievances, because it’s time-consuming and creates friction,” he said.

He added: “The agency created chaos, in my opinion, between the labor union, the employees, and the management. And even first-line managers are confused,” Kabbara said. “They’re really confused on how they’re going to implement the [new] posture. So the agency is not listening.”

Kabbara said the FAA gave the AFSCME Local 1653 advanced notice about its revised return-to-office plans, and that the union has been in talks with the agency.

However, he said the union and the agency remain divided on the issue.

“There were conversations and discussions. We collaborated, we discussed, but we never negotiated … So we are more in like a discussion mode,” he said.  “Nothing has been brought to the table to say,  ‘Here’s what we want to talk about. Can we sit down and discuss and negotiate?'”

Kabbara said bargaining unit employees have been more productive with greater access to telework, and that the union has asked the FAA to provide any data that refutes their claim.

“They have failed to provide that information. That makes me tend to believe that they really have no understanding of how things work,” Kabbara said.

“There are some mechanisms that you can use for those that underperform. And we will support that, if you take away their telework or limit their telework and all that. That you can use, instead of penalizing the rest of the group for just one underperforming individual,” he added.

Kabbara said the union is concerned the FAA doesn’t have enough office space to accommodate more employees in the office. He said the agency has downsized on leased office space in recent years.

“The FAA is within its right to bring the employees back to the office, no question about it,” he said. ‘The agency really needs to be more open, sit down at the table [and] negotiate. Let’s work it out together.”

The post FAA rethinks its return-to-office policy, sets lower in-person goal than previously expected first appeared on Federal News Network.

In 2027, FEMA will move two blocks from its current leased office space to a renovated and federally owned facility at 301 7th Street SW — across the street from the Department of Housing and Urban Development headquarters.

A FEMA spokesperson told Federal News Network the new headquarters will include a larger space for its National Response Coordination Center, and that the new space “fits the unique needs of emergency management.”

“This move and the building’s renovations provide FEMA the opportunity to design a space that fits the unique needs of emergency management,” the spokesperson said. “Moving into a federally owned building will better protect taxpayer investments into the facility infrastructure which are needed to meet FEMA’s operational needs.”

FEMA currently resides in two buildings at 400 C St. and 500 C St. SW.

The spokesperson added that over FEMA’s 45-year history, “our areas of responsibility have increased,” as disasters have become more frequent and severe.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell described the new headquarters to employees, in a recent all-staff email, as a 1930s Art Deco/Moderne style building that stands out as “one of the earliest examples of federal architecture in Washington, D.C.”

“As emergency managers, we constantly evolve to meet the needs of those we serve. Our workspace should be held to the same standard,” she wrote.

Criswell told employees in the email that the building first served as a federal warehouse, but was converted into office space in 1964.

“The building design was revolutionary at the time, and just like FEMA, it continued to evolve over the years to meet the needs and missions of its occupants,” she wrote.

The building’s interior, she told employees, will be demolished and rebuilt to include modern workspaces, conference rooms and Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFS).

“These newly designed spaces will allow us to continue to improve our capabilities to help people before, during, and after disasters. And, importantly, as a federally owned space, the new facility will offer long-term stability and cost savings,” Criswell wrote.

Criswell said the new headquarters’ proximity to its current building will only require employees to make “minor adjustments” to their commute. FEMA, she added, will remain close to the White House, as well as other federal agency partners and Congress.

The planned move reinforces FEMA’s decision years ago to break with other DHS component agencies and avoid moving to the consolidated St. Elizabeths campus in Southeast D.C.

The move to a federally owned building also reflects a change in plans FEMA made only a few years ago, to stay in their lease office space for up to 20 years.

Federal News Network first reported in 2019 that FEMA scrapped plans to move to the new DHS campus, in favor of “long-term” leased office space.

The agency made its decision the same year DHS and the General Services Administration asked Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a FEMA headquarters at the ongoing St. Elizabeths campus.

DHS Undersecretary for Management Randolph “Tex” Alles told Federal News Network in 2019 that long-term options for housing FEMA included extending the lease on its current space, or moving FEMA personnel to the National Capital Region Building that GSA owns near L’Enfant Plaza.

FEMA joins the Transportation Security Agency and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as DHS component agencies that opted out of moving to St. Elizabeths and building their own headquarters in the national capital region.

FEMA’s decision to walk away from the St. Elizabeths campus reflects difficulties DHS and GSA have had in managing budget shortfalls while still trying to bring a critical mass of employees to the site.

The original master plan for the St. Elizabeths campus called for FEMA to relocate its headquarters, along with all other DHS components “directly involved in programmatic functions for mission execution,” GSA wrote in a 2020 prospectus.

The campus has been under construction for more than a decade. Construction is expected to be completed in 2026.

In September 2020, a GSA spokesperson told Federal News Network that “FEMA is no longer part of the St. Elizabeths campus consolidation plan.”

The post FEMA plans move to new headquarters in 2027, solidifying break from DHS campus first appeared on Federal News Network.

Congress and a federal watchdog are taking a closer look at much-scrutinized plans to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland.

But a top FBI official is warning lawmakers that the agency’s workforce is running into several problems with its current headquarters.

More than 15 years after the federal government originally planned for a new FBI headquarters, the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building is breaking down in ways that hamper the agency’s mission.

Meanwhile, the FBI has moved thousands of its employees out of the Washington, D.C. metro area over the past decade, and built up its presence at other campuses across the country.

Nets around the Hoover building perimeter keep chunks of concrete from falling off and hitting pedestrians.

But Nick Dimos, the assistant director of the FBI’s Finance and Facilities Division, told members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday that parts of the building are also dropping onto employee workspaces and equipment.

“The FBI J. Edgar Hoover Building, quite frankly, is failing,” Dimos said during an economic development, public buildings and emergency management subcommittee hearing.

Dimos told lawmakers the FBI spent $75 million since 2011 to avoid a “catastrophic” breakdown of its water infrastructure.

“Pipe bursts and plumbing challenges are commonplace, leading to the damage of FBI space, IT and records,” he said.

Power and network infrastructure challenges at the Hoover building, he added, are “ever-present, resulting in disruptions to connectivity needed to coordinate FBI cases nationwide.”

Dimos said the federal government is spending millions of dollars on expensive commercial leases in the D.C. metro area, because the FBI workforce is “scattered across multiple locations” beyond the Hoover building.

Dimos said a “heroic team of experts” is working to maintain the facility, but the FBI knows the building is nearing the end of its life, and is only making essential repairs – not long-term upgrades.

“Knowing that this conversation has been ongoing about a new facility, we want to invest in the building to ensure that we’re keeping it stable and safe, and at the same time, not invest too much funding such that it would be imprudent,” Dimos said.

The FBI, he added, made some “incremental security investments” to the Hoover building over the years, but those improvements are limited by the age of the building.

“There are, of course, many security features that we cannot implement, given the 1974 construction,” Dimos said.

Lawmakers, however, are demanding answers about how the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, arrived at its decision last month to build a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt.

Subcommittee Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said that after 15 years of planning for a new FBI headquarters, “there hasn’t been a shovel in the ground — and of course, the costs ballooned, probably out of sight.”

Perry added that he’s “not convinced the FBI needs a brand-new building.”

“I’m not on board with the idea that the FBI needs a shiny new building at the taxpayers’ expense,” he said.

GSA’s inspector general is looking into the site selection process for the FBI’s new suburban headquarters. That’s after FBI Director Chris Wray raised concerns about how GSA reached its decision.

Wray told employees in an email immediately following GSA’s announcement that he had “concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan.”

Wray said a three-member panel, made up of two career GSA officials and one career FBI official, originally recommended a new FBI headquarters in Springfield, Virginia, based on the criteria in its selection plan.

But in a second phase, former Public Buildings Service Commissioner Nina Albert, in her capacity as the site selection authority (SSA), diverged from the panel’s recommendations and chose Greenbelt.

Wray added that the “FBI raised a serious concern about the appearance of a lack of impartiality by the GSA senior executive,” because Albert previously served as an executive at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

WMATA owns the parcel of land in Greenbelt where a future FBI headquarters would be built.

Dimos said the FBI requested GSA pick a new site selection authority to rerun the final step of the process — “picking an individual who did not have any previous affiliation with the three sites.”

“GSA did not accept this request and our concerns were not sufficiently addressed,” Dimos said.

The subcommittee requested Albert testify at the hearing, but Perry said she declined to appear.

“We’ll have to consider other options available to the subcommittee, so that we can hear her perspective in the future, which will be very important to getting to the bottom of this issue,” Perry said.

Dimos said the FBI does not object to GSA selecting Greenbelt as the final location for a new FBI headquarters, and the agency is also “not suggesting a lack of integrity on the part of the SSA.”

“However, for a decision of this magnitude, the process needs to be above reproach, and we continue to hold concerns about how the final stage of the process was conducted, he said.

GSA updated its criteria for selecting a new FBI headquarters site in July.

Maryland lawmakers, as part of a comprehensive spending deal for fiscal 2023, included language that required GSA to give added consideration to the Biden administration’s equity goals and overall project cost when selecting an FBI headquarters site.

That new criteria gave less consideration to each site’s proximity to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

Dimos said that prior to the FY 2023 spending bill, “it was the FBI’s position that the optimal solution was to be in a newly constructed building closer to downtown Washington,” close to the Justice Department’s headquarters and other law enforcement partners.

“As long as a fair and transparent process is followed, we will follow the law and the law said that the FBI shall go to one of those three suburban sites,” he said.

The post Lawmakers scrutinize plan for new FBI headquarters, but agency says its current site is ‘failing’ first appeared on Federal News Network.

• Agencies have implemented a vast majority of the recommendations from the Government Accountability Office on how to improve the management of software and reduce duplication across IT investments. A new report from GAO found that out of 392 recommendations made to 33 agencies around federal IT in 2021, agencies had implemented 346 of them. That's 88%. But GAO said recommendations around agency CIOs and IT budgets remain a struggle for many agencies to implement. The report is a result of the Modernizing Government Technology Act, which requires that every two years, GAO review how agencies are managing federal IT procurement and reducing duplicative investments.
  (GAO report on IT management - Government Accountability Office)
• Congress is scrutinizing plans for a new FBI headquarters while the current HQ is falling apart. The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover building is showing its age, as it sports nets around its perimeter keep chunks of concrete from falling off and hitting pedestrians. But parts of the building are also dropping onto employee workspaces and equipment. Nick Dimos, assistant director of the FBI’s Finance and Facilities Division, said the agency has spent $75 million since 2011 to avoid a “catastrophic” breakdown of its water systems. "Pipe bursts and plumbing challenges are commonplace, leading to the damage of FBI space, IT and records,” he said.
  (An examination of GSA’s site selection for the FBI headquarters - House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee )
• Agency leaders are sharing strategies for how to get more feedback from employees. The higher the response rate for the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, the more accurate picture chief human capital officers get into what their workforce needs. But for many agencies, it is challenging to get more responses. For 2023, FEVS got a 39% response rate across government. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development is one agency well above that average, with 71% of HUD's employees responding to FEVS this year. “One of the areas that we really focus on is the ‘I believe’ — that I believe the results of this survey really are going to make a difference,” Lori Michalski, HUD's chief human capital officer, said.
  (3 agencies that improved their FEVS response rates this year — and how they did it - Federal News Network)
• The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is continuing its push for commercial services. NGA plans to release a request for proposals for commercial GEOINT data services in January. The agency will make multiple awards. That is according to Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, the director of NGA. “I wish I could tell you the amount, but let's just say it's significant,” Whitworth said Tuesday during the Defense Department Intelligence Information System (DoDIIS) conference in Portland, Oregon. He said the contracts will provide NGA with commercial object detection, as well as analytics and automation.
  (NGA plans 'significant' awards for commercial data services - Federal News Network)
• A new cyber leader is headed to the White House. The Senate on Tuesday voted 59 to 40 to confirm Harry Coker as the next national cyber director. Coker will serve as principal adviser to President Joe Biden on cybersecurity policy and strategy. The first national cyber director, Chris Inglis, retired earlier this year. Kemba Walden then served as acting national cyber director until mid-November. Coker is a retired Navy officer and former intelligence community official. He served as executive director of the National Security Agency between 2017 and 2019.
  (ONCD welcomes Harry Coker as national cyber director - White House)
• Military service will count toward veterans’ family and medical leave eligibility requirements when entering the federal workforce. Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Don Bacon’s (R-Neb.) amendment expanding access to family and medical leave made it to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2024. Certain military service now meets the definition of service under the Family and Medical Leave Act and will count toward satisfaction of the 12-month probationary period. While the federal government has taken steps to improve paid family leave policies, transitioning to a civilian job in the government has been a challenge for service members.
  (NDAA provision secures family and medical leave benefits for veterans when entering federal workforce - Don Beyer (D-Va.))
• Two members of Congress are hoping to help ease staffing shortages at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. A bipartisan bill, introduced last week in the House, would grant the Bureau of Prisons direct-hire authority until all prison facilities reach 96% staff capacity. Even if the bill is enacted, it would likely still be a long road to get there. Currently, BOP faces a 40% shortage of correctional officers nationwide.
  (BOP Direct-Hire Authority Act - Reps. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) and Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.))
• Federal agencies see 1,200 use cases for artificial intelligence in government, but agencies are putting less than one in five of those ideas into practice. The Office of Personnel Management is using AI to match federal job seekers with recommendations for positions. And the Department of Health and Human Services is using AI chatbots to triage help-desk requests. NASA identified the most AI use cases of any agency, followed by the Commerce Department.
  (Federal agencies flag 1,200 AI uses cases, but see few actually implemented - Federal News Network)
• A new report provides both individual developers and large companies with software supply chain security best practices. U.S. security agencies and industry partners’ new guidance focuses on the management of open-source software and software bills of materials (SBOMs). The report dives into recommended best practices for describing, assessing and measuring security practices throughout the software lifecycle. The guidance builds on a June 2023 memo from the Office of Management and Budget that focuses on bolstering supply chain security, including open-source software and SBOMs.
  (U.S. security agencies release recommendations on securing software supply chain - National Security Agency)

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