See
Waste in Federal Property Management by Chris Edwards of Cato.
"The Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a report
finding waste in the department’s vast warehousing of equipment and
supplies. Here are a few examples of the problems found by the IG:
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leases a 54,000
square foot warehouse in Northern Virginia to store mostly excess
furniture leftover from projects in which CBP reduced office space. CBP
also stockpiles reams of printer/copier paper at this location and will
pay about $934,000 per year to lease this warehouse. Many of the items
in the warehouse appeared to be obsolete or broken. The annual lease
cost exceeds our estimated value of these items.
… CBP leases a 41,129-square-foot GSA warehouse also located in
Northern Virginia to support its Data Center and store new computer
equipment CBP distributes to its field offices. In addition, CBP stores
old computer equipment. CBP will pay about $502,000 each year to lease
this warehouse. The iTeam estimated that about half of the items stored
in this warehouse were old computer systems and other obsolete
technologies.
… CBP leases a 6,500-square-foot GSA warehouse in Northern California
to store old computers, broken equipment, old office furniture, and
some books. CBP will pay about $74,000 each year to lease this
warehouse. The warehouse is mostly empty and CBP does not actively
manage or conduct physical inventories of the stored items.
These examples exemplify points made in my study, Why the Federal Government Fails.
Well-managed businesses would not be holding onto piles of obsolete and
broken furniture and computers, and paying for expensive storage. They
have a bottom line to worry about, and face constant pressure to reduce
costs. By contrast, federal government managers have little or no
incentive to reduce costs, and so they don’t.
The new report on DHS inventory mismanagement is a microcosm of the
broader waste in the government’s vast holdings of real property. The federal government owns or leases
more than 275,000 buildings, including offices, hospitals, and
warehouses. There is huge excess in these holdings, which cost $22
billion a year to maintain. The government has long been a poor manager
of it assets, and the GAO has had federal property holdings on its “high
risk” list for years.
To the Obama administration’s credit, it is taking modest steps to
reduce the waste in federal property management. But the more
fundamental issue is that the government is a vastly bloated enterprise
that does too much and has little incentive to do it efficiently."
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