	Background

GSA spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on needed repairs  to the more than 1,600 federally owned buildings under its custody and  control, which are occupied by a wide variety of federal tenant agencies. In fiscal year 2018, GSA requested more than $1.4 billion  for R&A activities; $666 million in obligational authority was appropriated  from the FBF to perform major and minor repairs and alterations. GSA Collects Information on R&A Projects Electronically and Is Taking Steps to Improve the Collection of Small Project Information

		Regional GSA Offices Collect Information on Capital and Small R&A Projects Electronically

In order to track projects, GSA has developed numerous systems that  regional officials are required to use to collect information electronically  on R&A projects. Officials from GSA’s central office said that since ePM was first  introduced in 2009, they have worked with regional officials to adjust the  types of information that project team members must input to improve the  completeness, timeliness, and usefulness of project information collected. For example,  project team members from all four regions we interviewed said they find  the “earned value” tool in ePM to be useful for project management. GSA  conducts monthly checks to assess the number of small projects in  ePMXpress with information that is either missing or out of date and  issues reports to its regions summarizing the results of these checks. We found that  recent GSA reports on this reconciliation showed that the overall  percentage of small projects having been created in the system has  improved. GSA Uses Schedule and Budget Measures to Assess the Performance of R&A Projects and Is Taking Steps to Improve Reporting

		GSA Uses Schedule- and Budget-Related Performance Measures to Assess R&A Projects

GSA’s central office assesses the performance of capital and small R&A  projects across its regional offices by focusing primarily on schedule and  budget-related measures. GSA also has two “project delivery” measures. GSA Reports on R&A Projects’ Performance at Regional and National Levels and Is Introducing New Reporting Intended to Create a Consistent Understanding of Performance

GSA’s central office produces regional and national reports and provides  them to their regional offices to facilitate internal discussion on R&A  projects’ performance. The  officials added that some regions’ opting to rely on other sources of  information has contributed to an inconsistent understanding of R&A  projects’ performance across the agency. Officials from GSA’s central office acknowledge that their  ongoing outreach to the regional offices emphasizes the importance of  complete and timely information—as discussed earlier—to the agency’s  ability to comprehensively understand R&A projects’ performance. The scope of the work focused on R&A projects from two R&A  program funding streams: “capital” R&A projects (those with costs greater  than $3.095 million) and “small” R&A projects (those with costs less than  or equal to $3.095 million and greater than $25,000); we did not include  projects related to new building construction projects or reimbursable  work authorization projects, which are those performed by GSA but  funded by other federal agencies to improve or renovate federal facilities. We reviewed the information in these reports to  identify potential trends in regions’ complete and timely entry of R&A  project information and interviewed GSA officials about the sources of  information used to generate the reports and steps officials take to ensure  its accuracy. We reviewed documentation on the collection of the data and  analyzed the data for missing information and found the data to be  sufficiently reliable for the purpose of selecting projects to understand  how R&A project information is input by regional officials and how it is  used across GSA. Within each of the four selected regions, we identified the sole  capital R&A project that was substantially completed between October  2013 and August 2017, for a total of four capital projects. Information on the projects we selected is not  generalizable to all R&A projects, and the views of the regional officials  interviewed are not generalizable to all of GSA’s regional offices.
Why GAO Did This Study

Each year, GSA spends hundreds of millions of dollars on R&A projects to address the repair, renovation, or modernization needs of the more than 1,600 federally owned buildings under the agency's custody and control—the average building's age is 47 years old. In fiscal year 2018, Congress appropriated $666 million in obligational authority from the Federal Buildings Fund for GSA's R&A program. Collecting information is fundamental to monitoring progress and assessing projects' performance.
GAO was asked to review issues about GSA's collection of information needed to manage its R&A projects. This report examines how GSA (1) collects information on individual R&A projects and (2) assesses the performance of R&A projects.
GAO reviewed documentation on the systems that GSA uses to support its management of the R&A program, as well as internal GSA reports on regional offices' use of the system that tracks projects' status. GAO also interviewed officials from GSA's central office and four regional offices to understand the types of information collected on R&A projects and how the information is input in GSA's systems. To identify the regional officials to be interviewed, GAO selected a non-generalizable sample of four capital R&A projects and eight small R&A projects, active between October 2013 and August 2017, based on a preliminary analysis of GSA data.
GSA had no comments on the report.

What GAO Found

The General Services Administration (GSA) requires its regional offices to collect information on their repair and alteration (R&A) projects electronically and is working to improve the completeness and timeliness of this collection. Since 2011, GSA has required its regional offices to input and update information on both capital projects (those costing more than $3.095 million as of fiscal year 2018) and small projects (those costing less than $3.095 million). Officials from the four regions GAO interviewed said they find this system to be useful for forecasting how a capital project will progress. Regarding small projects' information, GSA has taken steps to improve regional offices' collection by, for example, conducting monthly checks to ensure that all small projects have been created in the system, assessing the number of projects that have missing information, and introducing a simplified way that GSA's regions can enter information in the system. GSA officials reported that, moving forward, they are continuing to emphasize the importance of collecting complete and timely information, which is needed to assess the performance of all R&A projects.
GSA uses schedule- and budget-focused measures to assess the individual, the regional, and the national performance of capital and small R&A projects and is working to create a consistent understanding of performance. GSA's measures rely on information input by regional officials. For example, during the construction phase, GSA uses two “project delivery” measures, which compare a project's estimated schedule and budget with actual outcomes. GSA produces regional and national reports detailing projects' performance relative to these measures. However, not all regional officials GAO spoke with view these reports as useful because they are not specific to the officials' information needs. As a result, some regions have created their own reports, contributing to an inconsistent understanding of R&A projects' performance across the agency. GSA has conducted outreach to its regions and has begun to introduce new “dashboard” reports that present a consolidated view of R&A projects' information. Moving forward, GSA's ability to assess R&A projects' performance will continue to rely on regional officials' complete and timely input of information for both capital and small projects.