US Audit Says Federal Office Occupancy Data Omit Vacant Space, Obscuring Savings Choices

WASHINGTON — The United States' first broad reporting system for federal office occupancy is giving officials information to reduce unused buildings and leases, but its published figures leave out important vacant space and rely on inconsistent measurements, according to a Government Accountability Office report released October 16, 2026.

The report, GAO-27-108503, examines implementation of the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act, enacted in January 2025. The law requires major federal agencies to collect occupancy information and identifies a 60% utilization threshold for reporting and potential future space reductions. The General Services Administration (GSA) coordinated the first public submissions in March 2026.

GAO found that some GSA-controlled space without an active agency occupancy agreement was excluded from the figures, even when it was vacant within a building partly occupied by other tenants. That can make a building appear more heavily used than it is if its empty floors are absent from the calculation. A separate reporting choice also leaves out individual spaces that meet or exceed 60% utilization from the detailed public dataset, making it harder to distinguish properties that may be candidates for disposal from those already used efficiently. The omissions work in different directions and cannot be treated as evidence that every building is less occupied than reported.

Agency measurement practices vary as well. Twenty of the 23 agencies responding to GAO's survey used badge-access records, and 16 of those supplemented them with other sources. The agencies reported a combined US$16 million in costs for collecting and reporting the information in 2025. The survey is not a full inventory of every federal facility.

The audit described cases in which an agency counted assigned employees instead of those physically present, and other cases where agencies excluded spaces that GSA guidance expected them to include. The Department of the Interior had been using assigned staff counts rather than actual attendance at many locations, citing limited badge technology and difficulties matching timecards to buildings. Interior officials told auditors they began reporting headquarters badge swipes in June 2026 while developing broader collection methods.

GSA's public submissions page acknowledges that figures from partner agencies and third-party sources may be incomplete, outdated or inaccurate. Its disclaimer does not, by itself, identify every exclusion highlighted by GAO. Independent reporting by Facilities Dive examined the competing methodologies and noted that even a building reported above the utilization threshold could fall below it if vacant unassigned floors were counted.

The figures nevertheless have operational value. Some agencies told GAO they were using occupancy records to identify properties for consolidation or disposal and expected annual savings in the millions of dollars. Those are projected benefits, not a verified total of realized taxpayer savings.

GAO issued four recommendations to GSA, including adding vacant-space and building-wide context, making clear which above-threshold properties are absent from public data, and coordinating more consistent reporting with agencies and the Office of Management and Budget. GSA neither agreed nor disagreed with the recommendations and said it would consider them.

Federal real-property management has been on GAO's High Risk list for more than two decades. The new data can inform decisions about which offices to retain, consolidate or sell, but the audit shows that Congress and the public still lack a fully comparable picture of how government space is used. The findings concern measurement and disclosure controls, not a determination that particular property sales are improper or that officials deliberately concealed vacant buildings.