Page 1 GAO-25-108060 GSA Priority Recommendations
Comptroller General
of the United States
May 16, 2025
The Honorable Stephen Ehikian
Acting Administrator
General Services Administration
1800 F Street, NW
Washington, DC 20405
Priority Open Recommendations: General Services Administration
Dear Acting Administrator Ehikian:
The purpose of this letter is to call your personal attention to two areas based on GAO’s past
work and eight open priority recommendations, which are enclosed.
1
Additionally, there are 16
other GAO open recommendations that we will continue to work with your staff to address.
We are highlighting the following areas that warrant your timely and focused attention.
Specifically:
Managing federal real property. The General Services Administration’s (GSA) management of
federal real property has been on GAO’s High-Risk List since 2003.
2
Better management of the
federal government’s real property portfolio is necessary to effectively dispose of unneeded
buildings, collect reliable real property data, and address deferred maintenance and repair.
Effectively disposing of unneeded property. As you know, federal agencies face long-standing
challenges in disposing of unneeded real property. In our prior work we found that GSA has not
developed a process that fully leverages lessons learned from a temporary approach for
reducing the federal government’s real property inventory. As the agency explores new ways to
dispose of federal property, implementing our recommendation to develop a process with
relevant stakeholders to collect and share lessons learned would give GSA an opportunity to
leverage stakeholders’ knowledge and potentially address challenges with disposing of real
property. Developing this process would also provide stakeholders, including Congress, with
insights into how the federal government could better dispose of its real property.
Improving federal real property data. GSA needs to collect accurate, complete, and useful real
property data to manage its real property portfolio, including any efforts to dispose of excess
property. In February 2020, GAO reported that 67 percent of the street addresses in the public
database of federal real property were incomplete or incorrectly formatted. We recommended
that GSA continue to work closely with the Office of Management and Budget and federal
1
GAO considers a recommendation to be a priority if when implemented, it may significantly improve government
operations, for example, by realizing large dollar savings; eliminating mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or making
progress toward addressing a high-risk or duplication issue.
2
GAO, High-Risk Series: Heightened Attention Could Save Billions More and Improve Government Efficiency and
Effectiveness, GAO-25-107743 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 25, 2025).
