GAO-19-57: Federal Real Property Asset Management

AM Foundational Thinking

As the Foundational Thinking miniseries nears an end, this installment highlights the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report GAO-19-57: Federal Real Property Asset Management – Agencies Could Benefit from Additional Information on Leading Practices. This report was written in response to a US Congressional inquiry. Leaders were concerned that the federal government spends billions of dollars annually to operate and maintain its real property portfolio, yet there remained no clear way to evaluate performance nor measure the benefits from the activities that manage this portfolio. The Congressional inquiry specifically asked GAO to evaluate if use of ISO 55000 could help achieve these ends.

GAO's approach to evaluating this sought to answer three questions:

• What are the key characteristics of an effective asset management framework?

• What are the challenges to implementing an asset management framework? and

• Does government-wide asset management guidance and information reflect stan…