The head of the General Services administration, robin carnahan, testified on the agencys oversight in federal spending. During the hearing, he addressed plans for the fbis new headquarters in the effective teleworking on Government Office space. The committee will come to order, want to welcome everyone here this morning. Without objection, the chairman declared a recess at any time. Good mor the committee of oversight w and accountability will come to order, i want to welcome everyone here this morning. Without objection, the chair might declare a recess at any time. Good morning and welcome to this hearing on the General Services administration. Gsa is intended to serve as the federal government supply closet, landlord, real estate agent, motor pool, and i. T. Support. Fortunately, gsa is falling short in executing its mission. Just look at the sudden announcement last week of the proposed fbi headquarters relocation. It appears that at the 11th hour, a political appointee was given the role of decision maker, she then changed the criteria, reversed the recommendation of career experts, then promptly left for a new job. Rtisan hearing and bn investigation into longstanding misrepresentations login. Gov. Their work is ongoing for Services Provided or claims to provide relevant in our fight against identity theft, a key component of the massive amounts of fraud we saw and covered relief programs. If the Biden Administration is intent on pushing login. Gov on federal pages, we need confidence in its ability to protect interests of the american taxpayer. Gsa is facing a crisis of confidence and it reversed the and began an eufpb vest tkpwaeugs into longstanding. So if the Biden Administration is intent on pushing log in. Com on to federal agencies we all need to have confidence in its ability to protect the interest. Gsa is facing a crisis of confidence. And it does so at a point when the Biden Administration is attempting to harden its radical policies in a number of different ways. The electrification. And how much it actually uses it. Sits empty. According to the Accountability Office federal buildings in dc were operating at 25 capacity. And there are under used and buildings strewn across the nation. Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds are spent annually just to maintain government eowned properties that should be sold off. A billion dollars or more could be saved annually by terminated unneeded of a billion dollars. Unused federal space was an issue prior to the pandemic. Prior Property Management has been on high risk list. But its now become one that is just simply too big and too costly to ignore. The bottom line is this, the Biden Administration cant have it both ways at taxpayers expense. It is the gate keeper to the massive federal marketplace across a wide variety of industries. It oversees hundreds of millions of rented square footage. This can be at least my republican colleagues, want to know that gsa is carrying out its responsibility with the genuine interest of the taxpayers front and center. And we are confident that the current administrator is up to the task. After receiving reports that she was rarely in washington we seeked informs. We found that she did spent a quite a bit amount of time away from washington, d. C. More than official would require. At a time when were asking work we want to know if aids are leading by example. I plead that the gsa administrator is here today to maintain these critical issue and i look forward to her testimony. Acquisition services and technology that provides the services and technology that sf federal agents need to meet their missions for the people. Administrative assumed her role during the covid19 pandemic and under her leadership she is instrumental from ensuring the safety of federal buildings was crucial to maintaining the continuity of the government. With the American Rescue plan, the infrastructure law and reduction act. Democrats have found a way to make the leader in addressing the challenges of the new century. Gsa has been at the forefront of integrating into government, reducing costs and building a more resilient work force. Thats preparing the federal government with the workplace 2030 initiative using federal purchasing power to support Small Businesses in middle class jobs building undermining its ability to reduce the real estate. The result is an increase in cost of the true cost by taking advantage of reduced real estate crisis and the advent of the great democrats are working to improve Government Services are extreme for the republicans ridiculous and internal games. This was originally scheduled for october 19 and knows how to be canceled the night before. The operations of the federal government on day 16 without a speaker of the h without a speaker of the house an to handle everyone its own operation would not make for a very convincing show. So now were facing yet another government shut down in a matter of days. This emergency again from the gop majorities selfdescribed chaos and division and clown show. The juvenile antics and ideological left to perform its most basic duties to do its work. And my colleagues are truly concerned about the importance of ensuring effective government to the American People they must start by getting their own act together and help representatives. With that i look forward to hearing testimony this morning from administrative. Thank you, i yield back. I introduce robin conahan. Administrator conahan was signed in in 2021. She oversees agencies ranging from Acquisition Solutions to management of public and leased buildings. Prior to her appointment, as administrator she led the senate and local business practice at 18f an organization within gas with technology solutions. Administrator carnaha also served as administrator aid until 20 l 16. Would you please stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear and affirm that the testimony youre about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god. Let the record show that administrator carnaha answered in the affirmative. Good morning thank you chairman comer and members of the committee. My name is administrator carnaha. Helping people serve and saving money while we do it is our north star. Thats why we focus on three priorities. The first is optimizing and modernizing the real estate footprint. Making it easier, faster and cheaper for agencies to buy goods and services and third delivering simple secure and accessible Digital Services for the public. My written testimony goes into greater detail in how were working to achieve these goals, today i want to highlight some of the opportunities and the challenges were seeing at this very unique moment to deliver better value for the people we serve and save money for taxpayers. I know this committee shares these goals and focus on ways we can partner together to get this done. First, gsa is laser focused on right sizing the federal footprint. Right now, agencies across the government are rethinking how much space they actually need. And while gsa doesnt make space decisions for agencies, we do work closely with them to leverage of teams expertise to help agencies plan and whatever possible to downsize. Gsa has a great track record of success in doing this. Since 2013, we felt reduced the federal footprint by disposing of 12 million square feet of owned space. And giving us 18 billion square feet of leased space. We want to build on that record by continuing to consolidate and dispose of unneeded property and leases and in fact, we see an opportunity to reduce the governments footprint by up to 30 . That would save 60 billion over 10 years. Just last week, we announced 23 properties to get this started to dispose of. This represents the potential of 30 to 3. 5 million square feet of reduced space and cost avoidance. Its not even counting cost avoidance in the next 7 years. This is just a start. We need your help to do even more. So what is that . What do we need . First we need congressional support for our full fy24 budget request and for key legislative reforms to speed up the process. Consolidating agencies and disposing of buildings can only happen if we have modern functional space for agencies to relocate into. The good news is that congress thought about that and came up to do just that when it established the federal Buildings Funds. In order to use agency rent payments to maintain buildings. The bad news is, that for the last 12 years on average rough live a billion dollars from that fund has been used for other agencies. As gao noted in their december support, the largest impediment is lack of funding. Bottom line, we have missed opportunities to shrink our real estate portfolio because we havent had the up front money to reconfigure and modernize facilities that we plan to keep, even though we know that those investments will pay back many times over through lower real estate cost. This is an important moment for American People to reap millions of dollars in future savings but it can only happen if we work together. Thats why were asking congress for a scoring fix for the federal Buildings Fund to ensure that the rent that we collect is reinvested in our public buildings and saving taxpayer money. Tsa works to make it faster up to the agency themselves. And satisfying procurement rules. Last year alone. Gsa helped the agency save 6 billion by leveraging. Several proposals to improve the acquisition process for common sense proposals and we look forward to working with you on those. Additionally gsa helps provide better digital experience for the public. The fact is there are a lot of common challenges that agencies face. Building Share Technology services the smart way to address those challenges, thats why gsa offers things like login. Gov and were continuously improving those options for agencies. Through log in. Gov that will start next year. And launching a new text messaging notification system that can save thousands of hours and millions of hour for agencies in the public. I also appreciate the committees support for extending the tech fund its one of the smartest investments in government. Finally if you may know, gsa concluded its congressionally mandated direct congressionally directed sight Selection Process for the fbis new headquarters canvas. Gsa determined that the site in green belt maryland to be the best, the fbi, the government because the site was lowest cost taxpayers provided the greatest access to transportation and visitors gave the government the most certainty on project schedule and the potential to provide sustainability and equity. I would encourage all of you to review the materials we posted online. It includes our Decision Making initials full 40 page decision document. And her analysis that led to the final decision. Weve always said from the begin that were committed to a fair process. We mean that and we put all of our documents online. Im proud of the process we ran. I stand behind the decision of our team. I know its a topic of great interest to the committee. Ill be happy to discuss it further and i thank you for the opportunity to testify today. And for your willingness to partner with gsa. To make our government work better for the people we serve and save money doing it. Thank you. Well now begin our question portion of the hearing and i will begin. Gao re recently found that buildings are at less than occupancy some as low as 10 . Gao knows that the federal government owns 511 million square feet of office space and reaches another 180 million square feet from the private sector for use of agencies. Thats almost 700 million square feet total of Office Space Available to the federal government and the cost of maintaining and operating out of that space is ridiculously high. Is it the cost in the billions. What i can speak to congressman is the federal Buildings Fund which i refer to in my statement and that is the fund that lease payments by government agencies. Its in the billions right . Yes, yes. According to data from the fiscal year federal real property, leased or otherwised managed was over 200,000. To maintain federal Office Buildings in five billion on rental lease payments. Administrator i think you agree with me that a portion of space is empty or under utilized. If we can just reduce the amount of office space by so , we would save roughly 5 billion on rent space, correct. I cannot agree with you more. The federal government owns properties all over the nation that are under utilized. Many of these properties could be used to more production. Selling these properties could yield billions and save hundreds of millions of the dollars in operation and Maintenance Cost right . Thats true. In fact, the gsa data in fiscal year 2022 said the limited disposal still managed 36 million in sales proceeds and 22 million in averted operations and Maintenance Costs. Administrators given that the federal workers are teleworking, i assume gsa is looking to downsize to realize these cost savings. So whats the hold up . So im glad you asked this question, this is a great topic. We need to optimize which means shrink and consolidate to make sure our buildings are both useful for communities where they sit but also save money for taxpayers . Are the federal agencies reluctant to give up office space . So congressman, i would like to talk a little bit about what were doing right now. If you give me a minute to begin the disposal process. Last week we got the disposal process. That will be 3. 5 million square feet of reduction. And get this. Its a billion dollars in cost avoidance than deferred maintenance and other things not even counting is President Biden pushing to close properties. Were working with the federal government to determine. The American People are fed up with the wasteful spending. It isnt just federal space. Recently found federal agencies spent 15 million on furniture over the last few years. Apparently, furnished space left empty under telewor k. Can you explain why the purchase of Office Furniture continued unabated. The government did not close down. Agencies were continuing to work, courthouses continued to operate. Prisons continued operating. Lots of businesses were in offices. I personally visited des moines throughout the pandemic. They were constructing a courthouse. Pennsylvania, san antonio texas. Let me ask about expired, but let me conclude with this, agencies that truly required new furniture could give their furniture to other agencies or sell it off to private parties. That would take some of the burden off taxpayers. I cannot imagine a big business spending on furnishing that no one working out of. We cant stand behind. I hope gsa hearing that message loud and clear. I know yield to ranking member. Thank you. Gsa is responsible for the efficient and effective functioning of our government. Where the budget the consequences are far reaching and more often than not counter productive. In fact, funding cuts to gsa translate to increase expenses for the American People. Such as those caused by deferred maintenance of federal property. Administrator callahan in fiscal year 2023, eight of the 17 Major Repairs and operation projects that gsa requested in the president s budget were resubmission because the projects did not receive funding when they were requested, is that correct. Correct. And in fiscal 2024, 13 out of the 17 projects were resubmissioned, is that correct . Yes, maam. Administrator is it correct that the cost of resubmitted projects increased by 300 million due to the congresss failure to fund them. I think that would be the lowest, yes. House republican fiscal year 2024 Financial Services and general government appropriations bill would cust 715 million from the federal Buildings Fund. This is 1. 6 billion below the administration request for the funds. Administrator calahan, how does this lack of funding. Thank you, if you think about in your own life. If you have two locations. If youre a business and has two locations and think time shrinks into one. You usually need a little bit of money to modernize and change the one building youre going to bring everybody into. Thats exactly what were talking about here. You cant get rid of the old building that you know is going to save you a lot of money if there is not a way to up front have none to invest in the improvement of the one youre going to keep. If you think about that, across our portfolio, its happening over and over again. The single biggest impediment to saving billions of dollars for taxpayers is access to up front money that congress intends to come from the line. Congress solved this problem and it worked for decades and its only been over the past 12 years that its over a billion dollars a year has been siphoned off to be used for other things. Were asking for that money to be able to then have long term planning to do what chairman and i believe needs to happen. Congress has also failed to provide to improve federal it systems when democrats, American Rescue plan provided 1 billion to the Technology Modernization, is it true that federal agencies submitted proposals submitting 1. 35 million in support for the Technology Modernization projects. Yes, thats it turned out to be one of the smartest investments congress can make in modernizing technology and its been very a popular among agencies because its a way to get money faster, given that Technology Changes so quickly. They need the speed of need is they be able to get access to money and tsa helps with that. What would happen if these projects, to these projects if republicans proceed in borrowing funding to the Technology ModernizationFund Fiscal Year 2024. I think the primary issue will be just delay. Were living in a world where Technology Changes weekly if not faster. And this is the only way the federal government can keep up is by having access to funding to respond at the speed of need. The tsa needs that and if theres a decision made to stop funding it, it will go back to the two or three or four or five years that sometimes takes to get funding for technology. Thank you. The gentle ladies time has expired. Were going to have two more questioners on each side. The chair recognizes mr. Higgins from louisiana. Thank you mr. Chairman, administrator carnahan, regarding the fbi many of my colleagues in the house and senate myself included have expressed serious concern regarding the weaponnization of the fbi. Im going to oppose that with every fiber of my being. I think the fbi as an institution should be taken down brick by brick and be built back literally. Were going to focus on gsas interaction. Its been widely reported that officials have voiced concerns concerning conflict of interest on the selection, the process of relocation of the building on october 12 of this year director ray, i oppose should be removed or resigned. Sent a letter to you raising concerns about conflicts of interest a gsa appointee at gsa. Regarding the selection of green built parcel of land quote unquote that was owned by the washington authority. Albert has now been hired as a deputy mayor of the district of columbias planning and economic development. Administrator. Have you conducted a review of these recommendations and if so what are your findings maam. Thanks for your questions sir. We have conducted a review. When i received raising concerns about the federal process and Isolation Authority that you mentioned, i referred it to our Legal Council and to dig into there were any merit. Does the Legal Council work for you administrator . Yes, sir, thats the Legal Counsel that i rely on. I sent that to our Legal Counsel, to review our participation and found, they found no merit in any of that. I will tell you that we pursued mrs. Albert because we knew of her prior. You found no merit not to interrupt, just follow what you stated here. That you found no merit, or the facts, did the facts not match up with what was reported . The suggestion that there was a conflict or a potential conflict is what i was referring to. This is an issue that we were aware of for former employer at the time she was hired as the top public Building Official and real estate expert at gsa. We knew that the fbi was going to be relocating to one of the three sites that congress directed us to make a decision about. We asked our Legal Council at that time, to make sure that that was fully vetted and. Do you say Legal Counsel, is that one attorney or is it a team or attorneys and is that public . Is this an attorney that the committee can question . Because we certainly would be interested in questioning the attorney that came to the conclusion that there was, there was no issues with the situation ill describe. You currently have accepted that okay. The attorney said theres no issue. Said theres no issue. The over Sight Committee is not going to accept that conclusion. So please clarify. You say you refer it to Legal Council. You refer to one Legal Council can you refer to that. Had they given you an official report. Can we review that official report. Are you going to stand upon that when we call you again next year and have that counselor in front of us . Yes, sir. I didnt understand your question but yes. We have hundreds of pages that we posted online about all of the Decision Making process and that includes the review of our Legal Counsel. In my remaining 30 seconds im trying to drill down here on what youre referring to as your Legal Counsel. Describe what that is to america. So theres a General Office of the general counsel at gsa that has several hundred attorneys in it. Im not sure how many were involved in the review of this but, the reference that im making is signed by the general counsel. Okay. So, suffice it to say a team of attorneys employed by gsa have determined that there was no nefarious intent in the situation i described. Regarding the location of the proposed new fbi building. The Legal Counsel of gsa, the general counsel looked into the questions that were raised by director ray and found that they did not have merit. My time has expired, but i advise this Committee Takes further action to look into this. Now that the gsas Legal Counsel. Just following up on that. So director ray brought the question fully, is that right. To have Legal Counsel look at the potential of that transaction. No, director ray sent a letter. But i said raised the concern. You said you sent a letter raising a concern. We have a difference of opinion here . Sorry. Repeat your question, please. Director ray brought forward the question about the bidding process regarding the new headquarters. Director ray sent a letter that listed some concerns that they had with the process that we used to make the site selection, yes. Yes, would have been good. Thats exactly what i was asking you. So he wasnt trying to hide something, he was trying to get an answer on some questions correct. Yes, sir. I know that gsa and the federal government holds sensitive data. So our Cyber Security is important in protecting all of that information. American rescue plan appropriated 1 million. The speed at which that money is deployed for modernization of some of the Legacy Technology thats out there and that closes the vulnerability. Can you give us an update on how that money has been deployed if theres any delay there, or is it just because of the number of requests across agencies. Yes, thanks for the question. The Technology Modernization, i truly think is one of the smartest things ever to have tasked by congress. We need to have modern technology to serve the American People and we need to have folks that understand Technology Help make the decisions about how that money is spent. So, when i arrived, the team that was running the tmf was pretty small. And it didnt involve and included a lot of season technologies. We have built up that team. We brought people in for the private sector to help run that operation. And it is completely transformed. The amounts of projects that have come through are much much higher speed. There have been 47 projects that have gone through with 770 million that have passed through and have been committed. So im really proud of the work that team has done. Okay, sounds like when we got off the ground, there was a little delay because of the small number of people that were administering that. Do you have a number of. I do, while its not sort of formally divided up to buckets that is mainly focused on Cyber Security. And this thing called zero trust has been one of the most primary areas of focus and of course something all agencies need. Also shared services. What i mean by that, or if you think about how government interacts with people. Its very similar. Whichever agency youre dealing with, right. Its can be identity, logging in, we do shared services and thats a thing that can save a lot of money and provide better service. We have do citizen Patient Services there. So a lot has been done with the v. A. And department of agriculture in ways that help veterans be able to access benefits quicker and help farmers be able to get apply for loans and do things quicker. Were doing a lot with National Archives at the moment. Weve also helped out homeland security. Its agencies across the government. In fact, now every single Cabinet Agency has done some work with tmf. All right. Theres some work on the sensitivity of Americans Health information. Has any resources been dedicated to solving that vulnerability . Yeah, protecting folks personal information is a high priority. I can look into and get back to you on what projects weve worked on with hsf. I yield back. Gentleman yields back. The chair declares the committee in recess. The committee stands in recess. [inaudible conversations]