Connect with us

Politics

Reducing the footprint: The push to optimize government office space

Published

6 months ago

on

What: Issuing of OMB Reduce the Footprint memo
When: OMB issued its “reduce the footprint” policy in March 2015, after ordering a freeze of federal office space two years earlier.
Why it matters: This policy was the first time OMB set a government policy to use property as efficiently as possible, and for agencies to set annual reduction targets.
To celebrate our 25th anniversary in 2025, we’re spotlighting 25 pivotal moments that reshaped the way the government operates. Visit our anniversary page each week as we look back on these defining moments.

The federal government remains the largest owner of real estate in the country. The General Services Administration, which oversees office space for most agencies, manages more than 360 million square feet of building space.

Multiple administrations have spent more than 20 years trying to rein in the size of the federal real estate portfolio and the cost of maintaining it. Those efforts gained momentum under the Obama administration. In 2013, the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo freezing the federal real estate footprint.

Two years later, it released a “reduce the footprint” policy, focused in part on the disposal of excess and underutilized federal property. This 2015 policy was the first time OMB set a government policy to use property as efficiently as possible, and for agencies to set annual reduction targets.

Former officials who oversaw federal real estate said the Obama administration’s policies reflected decades of previous efforts to address a growing sprawl of real estate, and reflected how technology was reshaping the work of federal employees.

Many of the same office-space debates that happened under the Obama administration are still happening in the present day, as agencies readjust their office space needs to federal employees accustomed to workplace flexibilities like telework.

Norman Dong, former Public Buildings Service commissioner in GSA under the Obama administration, said the government’s growing office space portfolio got more attention in 2003, when the Government Accountability Office added federal real property management to its High-Risk List.

“They recognized how the federal real estate footprint was just continuing to grow, and something else they recognized was that the government doesn’t even know how many owned and leased properties it has, so it just seemed to be out of control,” Dong said.

Bob Peck, another former PBS commissioner under the Obama administration, said federal occupancy of federal office buildings hovered around 70% when he joined government during the Clinton administration.

“Even then, we knew there was more square footage per person in the GSA inventory than was warranted by the number of people we had,” Peck said. “In the federal government, people don’t necessarily get paid what they’re worth. But one way you can express your status is by the size of your office. People aspire, over the course of their career, to getting promoted. And one thing about being promoted is you get an office — or you get a bigger office.”

The George W. Bush administration launched the Federal Real Property Council, comprised of senior leaders at OMB and GSA, as well as GSA agency senior property officers. The administration also required agencies to keep an inventory of their office space holdings through the Federal Real Property Profile.

“Even before 2012, when the Freeze the Footprint memo came out, you saw almost a decade of activity before that, where the federal government was just struggling to get its arms around this issue,” Dong said.

By 2015, federal civilian agencies held more than 300,000 buildings requiring $21 billion in annual operation and maintenance costs, as well as $6.8 billion in annual lease costs.

“The federal government must continue to improve its management and use of federal assets to maximize the use of scarce budgetary resources in order to improve the efficiency and reduce costs associated with federal office and warehouse usage,” OMB wrote in its 2015-2020 national strategy for efficient use of real property.

Dong said the Obama administration’s efforts created “heightened awareness across the federal government about the need to improve space utilization.”

Agencies accelerated the disposal of federally owned buildings after the “reduce the footprint” memo. In 2015 and 2016, the federal government disposed of nearly 6,000 buildings. However, those disposal efforts diminished in the following years.

“The surplus property that we really have in the federal government is not what’s designated surplus or underutilized in the federal real property inventory that GSA maintains. It’s in the buildings that we call occupied,” Peck said.

Those policies also came at a time when more federal employees received cell phones and laptops, and were no longer tethered to their offices to do their jobs.

“A lot of federal office space looked like the 1950s, and the world had moved on. We were in a digital world,” Peck said. “It was a very different world. We started talking about, ‘Let’s take a look at how much of the space we really use.’”

But downsizing federal office space doesn’t happen overnight. Peck said it became a challenge for agencies to explain to OMB that they needed more money upfront to move into consolidated spaces.

“The thing that was really successful about it was that it got people into a different mindset about what are the right numbers,” he said. “If a space request came up through the bureaucracy, and landed on somebody’s desk and it said, ‘We’re going to get 250 square feet person,’ somebody would say, ‘You know, probably not going to happen.’”

Under the Obama administration, GSA set a limit of 136 usable square feet per person in federal workspaces. Peck, however, said the policy set a “one-size-fits-all policy” for a wide variety of jobs across the government.

“This is my regret about what with Freeze the Footprint: People say, ‘There’s a number that we should just make everybody adhere to.’ But what works for a courthouse doesn’t work for laboratories. Some agencies — let’s take law enforcement agencies — they don’t spend much time in their office at all.”

Dong said agencies generally complied with the Obama administration’s policies, as intended. However, he recalled once visiting a GSA field office in the Midwest that was following the standard to the detriment of its day-to-day work.

“They took pride in meeting the 136 square foot per person space standard. However, they no longer had sufficient space to support the employee badging function in that federal building, nor did they have any space to take a private phone call. So you met the space design standard, but you lost sight of good judgment and common sense. So I think part of it is sometimes when there’s such a rigid adherence to government policy, just for the sake of compliance, you see some things that don’t make sense,” Dong said.

The post Reducing the footprint: The push to optimize government office space first appeared on Federal News Network.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Politics

President Trump Taps Dr. Ben Carson for New Role — A HUGE Win for America First Agenda

Published

2 hours ago

on

September 25, 2025

By

Dr. Ben Carson is the newest member of the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, was sworn in as the national adviser for nutrition, health, and housing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins shared that Carson’s role will be to oversee Trump’s new Big Beautiful Bill law, which aims to ensure Americans’ quality of life, from nutrition to stable housing.

After being sworn in, Carson shared, “Today, too many Americans are suffering from the effects of poor nutrition. Through common-sense policymaking, we have an opportunity to give our most vulnerable families the tools they need to flourish.”

Table of Contents

WATCH:

Per USDA:

Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced that Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., was sworn in as the National Advisor for Nutrition, Health, and Housing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“There is no one more qualified than Dr. Carson to advise on policies that improve Americans’ everyday quality of life, from nutrition to healthcare quality to ensuring families have access to safe and stable housing,” said Secretary Rollins.

“With six in ten Americans living with at least one chronic disease, and rural communities facing unique challenges with respect to adequate housing, Dr. Carson’s insight and experience is critical. Dr. Carson will be crucial to implementing the rural health investment provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill and advise on America First polices related to nutrition, health, and housing.

“As the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump Administration, Dr. Carson worked to expand opportunity and strengthen communities, and we are honored to welcome him to the second Trump Administration to help lead our efforts here at USDA to Make America Healthy Again and ensure rural America continues to prosper.”

“Today, too many Americans are suffering from the effects of poor nutrition. Through common-sense policymaking, we have an opportunity to give our most vulnerable families the tools they need to flourish,” said Dr. Ben Carson. “I am honored to work with Secretary Rollins on these important initiatives to help fulfill President Trump’s vision for a healthier, stronger America.”

On Sunday, Dr. Carson was one of the many speakers at the memorial service of the late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk.

During the memorial service, Carson highlighted that Kirk was shot at 12:24 p.m. and then continued to share the Bible verse John 12:24, which reads, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

WATCH:

The post President Trump Taps Dr. Ben Carson for New Role — A HUGE Win for America First Agenda appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Continue Reading

Politics

LEAKED MEMO: Deep State Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia Claim There Isn’t Enough Evidence to Convict Comey Amid Reports of Imminent Indictment

Published

2 hours ago

on

September 25, 2025

By

On Wednesday evening, disgruntled officials in the Eastern District of Virginia leaked contents of a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey.

As reported earlier, former FBI Director James Comey is expected to be indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia in the next few days.

Comey will reportedly be charged for lying to Congress in a 2020 testimony about whether he authorized leaks to the media.

Officials in the Eastern District of Virginia are still fighting to stop Comey from being charged after Trump fired US Attorney Erik Siebert.

President Trump last week fired Erik Siebert as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia because he refused to bring charges against Letitia James, Comey, Schiff and others.

On Saturday evening, President Trump announced that he had appointed Lindsey Halligan – his personal attorney who defended him against the Mar-a-Lago raid – as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Now, with just days to go before the statute of limitations runs out to charge Comey for lying during a September 30, 2020 testimony, Lindsey Halligan is reportedly gearing up to indict Comey.

Prosecutors reportedly gave newly sworn-in Halligan a memo defending James Comey and explaining why charges should not brought against the fired FBI Director.

Per MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian:

Two sources familiar with the matter tell me prosecutors in the EDVA US attorney‘s office presented newly sworn US attorney Lindsey Halligan with a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey, because there isn’t enough evidence to establish probable cause a crime was committed, let alone enough to convince a jury to convict him.

Justice Department guidelines say a case should not be brought unless prosecutors believe it’s more likely than not that they can win a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

The post LEAKED MEMO: Deep State Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia Claim There Isn’t Enough Evidence to Convict Comey Amid Reports of Imminent Indictment appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Continue Reading

Politics

Nearly 8 in 10 Voters Say the United States is in Political Crisis After the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Published

2 hours ago

on

September 25, 2025

By

Nearly eight in ten voters believe that the United States is in a political crisis in the wake of the assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk.

According to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released on Wednesday, a massive 93 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents, and 60 percent of Republicans said the nation is in a political crisis.

“The Kirk assassination lays bare raw, bipartisan concerns about where the country is headed,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said of the poll results.

Quinnipiac reports:

Seventy-one percent of voters think politically motivated violence in the United States today is a very serious problem, 22 percent think it is a somewhat serious problem, 3 percent think it is a not so serious problem, and 1 percent think it is not a problem at all.

This is a jump from Quinnipiac University’s June 26 poll when 54 percent thought politically motivated violence in the United States today was a very serious problem, 37 percent thought it was a somewhat serious problem, 6 percent thought it was a not so serious problem, and 2 percent thought it was not a problem at all.

Nearly 6 in 10 voters (58 percent) think it will not be possible to lower the temperature on political rhetoric and speech in the United States, while 34 percent think it will be possible.

Over half, 54 percent, of voters believe the US will see increased political violence over the next few years. Another 27 percent said they think it will stay “about the same,” while just 14 percent believe it will ease.

A 53 percent majority also said they are “pessimistic about freedom of speech being protected in the United States.”

Surprisingly, a 53 percent majority also believes the current system of democracy is not working.

“From a perceived assault on freedom of speech to the fragility of the democracy, a shudder of concern and pessimism rattles a broad swath of the electorate. Nearly 80 percent of registered voters feel they are witnessing a political crisis, seven in ten say political violence is a very serious problem, and a majority say this discord won’t go away anytime soon,” Malloy added.

The vast majority, 82 percent, said the way that people discuss politics is contributing to the violence.

“When asked if political discourse is contributing to violence, a rare meeting of the minds…Republicans, Democrats, and independents in equal numbers say yes, it is,” Malloy said.

The survey was conducted from September 18 to 21 among 1,276 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.

The post Nearly 8 in 10 Voters Say the United States is in Political Crisis After the Assassination of Charlie Kirk appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Continue Reading

Trending