This resulted in a need for an additional $6.1 million. During the first 6 months of this period (from about April through September), PBS compiles information on the various budget elements, including the rental-of-space account; reviews the information for reasonableness and accuracy; and prepares its budget estimates. We checked to see that the elements discussed were included in the Galaxy program. Galaxy–GSA’s Major Effort to Improve Tracking and Estimating in Its Rental-of-Space Account

GSA has taken corrective actions to specifically improve its tracking of the rental-of-space account and to improve its budget estimating for this account. The major step taken to improve both the tracking and estimating of the rental-of-space account was GSA’s development of the Galaxy program to be the primary tool to manage the rental-of-space account for fiscal year 1999 and to help manage project expenditures for fiscal year 2001. Galaxy has seven basic components, which include the elements PBS has identified as needed for tracking actual expenditures and estimating the funding requirements for future expenditures from the rental-of-space account. The training manual states that all active leases and projects loaded in Galaxy “must be validated.”  The manual lists five steps that the analyst must follow to validate the information. This process should help ensure that the projects are entered into STAR. We agree that good communication between the analysts maintaining Galaxy and the realty specialists maintaining STAR is critical to the accuracy of the data in Galaxy. To project the rent expenditure account, it is particularly important to obtain data on lease projects, which reflect potential changes in the inventory. First, a GSA official told us that GSA regions would use local market rental rate increases to determine the region’s estimated rental rate increase for a budget year. Conclusions

Galaxy appears to have elements needed to track PBS’ rental-of-space account and aid in more accurately estimating this account for future budgets. To the extent that PBS effectively implements the steps it has taken to maintain accurate data and good communications within GSA and with its customer agencies, has improved its estimation and budgetary process, and has corrected the problems it identified as causing its underestimation of the rental-of-space account, it should be able to produce better estimates of this account in the future.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the General Services Administration's (GSA) Galaxy program for estimating the rental expenses of the Federal Buildings Fund, focusing on whether the: (1) new Galaxy program included the elements needed for tracking actual rental expenditures and forecasting future rental-of-space funding requirements; and (2) additional actions the Public Building Service (PBS) was taking to improve its budget process addressed the causes of its underestimation of the rental-of-space account.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) Galaxy has seven basic components that appear capable of providing the data elements needed to track the actual expenditures made from the rental-of-space account and thus aid in forecasting the funding required for the rental-of-space account for budget purposes; (2) PBS has recognized that the success of the Galaxy program depends on the accuracy and maintenance of the data entered into Galaxy; (3) consequently, it has emphasized this issue in its training manual for Galaxy; (4) this manual states that all active leases and projects loaded into Galaxy must be validated; (5) the manual lists five steps that the analyst must follow to validate the information; (6) rent account analysts that GAO interviewed emphasized the need to maintain good communications among: (a) themselves, who maintain Galaxy; (b) the realty specialists, who maintain PBS' System for Tracking and Administering Real Property, the system from which the data in Galaxy were downloaded; and (c) customer agencies that provide information on their space needs; (7) GAO agrees that GSA and its customer agencies need to have good communications to ensure that GSA knows about any potential changes in inventory that a customer agency may plan in a given fiscal year, so that those changes are reflected in GSA's budget submission; (8) PBS has taken steps to improve: (a) how it calculates the rental-of-space estimate, such as using local market rental increases instead of national averages in calculating the rent increase estimates; and (b) the budgeting process in general, by establishing the Office of Financial and Information systems to oversee budget formulation, including estimating the rental-of-space account funding requirements; and (9) GAO believes that the actions PBS has identified to improve its budgeting process, if effectively implemented, address the causes it identified for its underestimation of the rental-of-space account.