The Department’s Management of the Federal Real Property Assistance Program

Our audit determined that the Department could improve its management of the Federal Real Property Assistance Program (FRPA). FRPA allows the Department to sell or lease, at a Public Benefit Allowance discount, surplus Federal real property to eligible entities for educational purposes. We found that although the Department’s FRPA awarding process was generally appropriate, it did not compile surplus property screening lists in accordance with its own criteria, did not always correctly calculate applicants’ Public Benefit Allowance discounts, and approved incomplete applications. As a result, the Department may not be considering all potentially eligible entities and may be awarding properties to entities that will not provide the greatest and longest lasting public benefit, are unable to maintain the property, or will not be using the property for an education-related purpose. We also found that the Department needed to improve its monitoring of program participants, as participants did not consistently submit required utilization reports and the Department did not request the reports when they were not submitted by the deadline. In addition, the Department did not always document or timely complete follow-up activities to address issues identified during its review of utilization reports and did not schedule required site visits within the first 12 months following conveyance for almost all of the properties that we reviewed. In some cases, property files were missing site inspection reports and documentation of required follow-up. Thorough, timely, and consistent monitoring is necessary to ensure that properties are being used for agreed-on educational purposes and to mitigate the potential for misuse. Noncompliance can result in the denial of services to those who could benefit from the use of such property and represents a loss to the interests of the Federal Government. We made eight recommendations to improve the Department’s FRPA awarding and monitoring processes through standardization, employee training, and enhanced supervisory review.