National Strategy for the Efficient Use of Real Property

In 2013, the Administration issued the Freeze the Footprint (FTF) policy to freeze the Federal Government's real estate footprint and restrict the growth of excess or underutilized properties. Freeze the Footprint was the first government-wide policy that established and required federal agencies to identify offsets (i.e., disposals) of existing property to support new property acquisitions, and that set a timeline for agencies to freeze their real property footprint. The policy was a success. Now federal agencies have frozen, reduced, or are on a path to freeze their baseline by the end of FY 2015. Agencies achieved a 21.4 million square foot reduction between FY 2012 and FY 2014. And in FY 2014 alone, for all domestic owned building types, the government disposed of 7,350 buildings, 47 million square feet of space, and eliminated $17 million of annual operation and maintenance cost as a result of Freeze the Footprint. Building on this success, today the Administration has issued the National Strategy for Real Property (National Strategy) and the Reduce the Footprint policy. With the establishment of the National Strategy and OMS's new Reduce the Footprint (RTF) policy agencies will be required not only to continue to freeze but also reduce their real property footprint over the next several years. The RTF policy will supersede the current FTF requirements by requiring agencies to reduce, rather than freeze, their footprint beginning in FY 2016. Through the National Strategy, OMB has established a clear strategic framework to guide agencies' real property management, to increase efficient real property use, control costs, and reduce real property holdings. The National Strategy outlines three key steps to improved real property management: • freeze growth in the inventory, • measure performance to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements through data driven decision-making, and ultimately, • reduce the size of the inventory by prioritizing actions to consolidate, co-locate, and dispose of properties. Over time, application of the National Strategy will improve the utilization of government owned buildings, lower the number of excess and underutilized properties, and improve the cost effectiveness and efficiency of the portfolio. Consolidating properties and collocating agengy office space is not only commonsense, but will provide more convenient access to the public and allow for upgraded facilities to provide more modern work environments for federal employees to conduct their business. Complementing the National Strategy, the RTF policy requires agencies to: 1. Set annual square foot reduction targets for …