The General Services Administration is on a mission to downsize the federal government’s office space footprint, after taking a closer look at its real estate inventory.

Its recently developed National Portfolio Plan takes stock of all federal buildings in need of upgrades, and which properties it should sell. Elliot Doomes, the outgoing commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service,  said those decisions often come down to vacancy rates or the cost of fixing up a building.

“That’s GSA operating like a business — figuring out what we need and what we don’t need, and disposing of it. Ultimately, you have to understand that the fundamental concept is, if the federal government acquires a piece of property — i.e. the American taxpayer — we at GSA feel like we have a responsibility to get maximum value for that piece of property,” Doomes said.

Doomes said this review of GSA’s portfolio helped the agency identify dozens of buildings that are now moving through its sale and disposal process. The properties account for about 6 million square feet.

Not counting revenue from any potential sales, GSA estimates the federal government will save nearly $2 billion in maintenance costs over 10 years, once it no longer owns these buildings.

Once GSA puts a property through its sale and disposal process, Doomes said agency officials reach out to local governments to them envision how the space might best suit the needs of the community.

“Once it leaves our inventory, it’s the local government that decides whether you can build a dog park there, or a 400-unit apartment building or 38 single-family homes. “The earlier we can communicate to a local government that we plan to dispose of a property, the more value we can generate for the American taxpayer, because we take that uncertainty out of it and with the hope that that’s going to drive the bidding up,” he said.

Among those properties, GSA is looking to offload the former headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS moved into the Nebraska Avenue Complex in Northwest D.C. in 2003, but now only its Office of Intelligence & Analysis remains there.

Most DHS components are now based out of a consolidated St. Elizabeths campus in Southeast D.C. The new DHS campus is one of the largest federal construction projects since the Pentagon. Plans for the campus began almost 20 years ago, and the project is still years away from being complete.

“Some agencies have done a better job at reducing their footprint and taking a hard look at what they want, versus what they need. And I think other agencies are still improving upon that,” Doomes said. “Our goal is to provide the right solute for the right agency. There are some agencies that their work is not conducive to telework. They have to be there every single day. Think law enforcement or providing medical care. And their space isn’t necessarily getting smaller. In some aspects, their mission is expanding. And then there’s some agencies that they need less space, because they have figured out how to be effective. And we’re not here to judge that.”

GSA’s plans to shrink the federal real estate portfolio come as the incoming Trump administration officials plan to crack down on telework and bring federal employees back to the office full-time.

Doomes said GSA will ensure its tenant agencies have the space they need to accommodate employees.

“Right now, today, if an agency — whether it was HHS, the Secret Service, or Commerce — came to us and said, ‘We’ve got 300 people that we want to house and we want to house them in this city,’ I know that we’ve got great portfolio people all over the country that would be able to say, ‘We’ve got it.’

Doomes said GSA would first determine if any federal building it owns would suit the agency’s need for space, and if not, help the agency find office space to lease.

“GSA and PBS have never been the ones to set the policy for agencies about when and how people work,” he said. “We go to an agency and they tell us what their needs are, and we try to offer them different workplace solutions.”

GSA is accelerating its plans to shrink federal office space, but also calling on Congress for more funding to continue this work. The agency asked for a $425 million “optimization fund” in its fiscal 2025 budget. meant expedite the disposal of underutilized federal properties.

“The basic concept is we’re going to have to spend money in order to save money,” Doomes said. “We had projects lined up all across the nation, where we wanted to move people out of buildings, which requires money, and put them in other buildings where they could fit, and then return around and dispose of those properties.”

Doomes said that those funds, for example, would allow GSA to build a new headquarters for DHS I&A at the St. Elizabeths campus, and free up its old headquarters to sell.

GSA is also looking to move the Railroad Retirement Board into the Ralph H. Metcalf building in downtown Chicago — a federal building that houses employees from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Agriculture Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“There’s been a concerted effort in a bipartisan way over the last 13 years to reduce the footprint. And it’s only been accelerated,” Doomes said.

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