Why It Matters
New federal office-space occupancy data is helping agencies shed unneeded real estate, but critical gaps in what gets reported are leaving Congress and the public with an incomplete picture of how much space the government actually uses, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit released Oct. 16.
The data submitted to Congress and the public in March excludes vacant space controlled by the General Services Administration (GSA). GAO warns that better consistency and completeness in the reporting could unlock tens of millions of dollars in additional savings by helping agencies prioritize underused locations for disposal.
The Big Picture
Chronic underutilization of federal buildings is one of the main reasons federal real property management has been on GAO's High Risk list for more than 20 years, and the federal government spends billions of dollars every year to operate and maintain space whether or not it is fully used.
Congress addressed the problem with the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act, enacted in January 2025, which requires the 24 Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Act agencies to collect and report occupancy data on the number of employees working in certain owned and leased spaces. The law set a July 2025 implementation deadline and included a provision directing GAO to review the costs agencies incur to measure occupancy and utilization rates.
Of the 24 CFO Act agencies required to participate, 23 completed GAO's survey. Twenty reported using existing badging systems to collect occupancy data, and 16 of those 20 supplemented badge data with other sources such as daily check-in surveys. Across the 23 agencies, the cost of collecting and reporting USE IT Act occupancy data totaled $16 million in 2025.
Many agencies told GAO they are using, or plan to use, the data to identify and dispose of unneeded property, with some officials reporting decisions to consolidate or dispose of underused space, expecting to save millions of dollars annually.
About one-third of the 23 surveyed agencies raised concerns about how GSA's data-collection and reporting guidelines affect their utilization-rate calculations, and some agencies described approaches inconsistent with those guidelines.
The Bottom Line
GAO made four recommendations, all directed at GSA, to improve future office-space utilization reporting. All four are listed as open, with actions to satisfy them either not yet taken or still being planned. GSA did not agree or disagree with the recommendations but said it would consider them.
The first calls on the GSA Administrator, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to ensure future reporting includes utilization data for all agency-occupied spaces and all GSA-controlled vacant space, and to provide Congress building-level data.
The second directs GSA to either clarify that spaces meeting or exceeding the USE IT Act's 60 percent utilization threshold are excluded from the full dataset on GSA.gov, or publish data for all spaces subject to the act.
The third asks GSA, in consultation with OMB, to evaluate how its guidelines affect agencies' calculated utilization rates, with particular attention to the definition of "typical office space" and the effects of counting non-workdays.
The fourth directs GSA, in consultation with OMB, to develop and implement a coordination plan with CFO Act agencies to improve the consistency and completeness of reported occupancy data.
Until GSA acts, the gaps GAO identified will continue to obscure the true state of federal office utilization, limiting Congress's ability to hold agencies accountable for underused space. All four GAO recommendations to the General Services Administration are listed as open, with no confirmed agency action yet.
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