The US General Services Administration is having ongoing problems complying with its obligations under the Geospatial Data Act 2018.

A just-released report from the US General Services Administration’s (GSA) own Office of Inspector General has found numerous problems, including ones that have been ongoing for several years, in the ways in which the US General Services Administration manages geospatial data, as well as the accuracy of some of that data.

In particular, the Inspector General found that the GSA is not meeting its Geospatial Data Act (DGA) requirements to:

• Maintain geospatial data;
• Maintain a geospatial data strategy;
• Maintain an inventory of all geospatial data assets; and
• Search for existing geospatial data before procuring new data.

Lazy latitudes and longitudes

While the report is not all bad news, it does highlight ongoing problems resulting from a number of difficulties.

For instance, the GSA is required to maintain the Inventory of Owned and Leased Properties (IOLP) and Federal Real Property Profile (FRPP) datasets.

The report found that these datasets contain many instances of inaccurate or missing latitude and longitude coordinates, as well as some outdated and incorrect congressional district representative data.

Of the 8,475 GSA-controlled properties listed in GSA’s IOLP-Buildings data subset, 634 (7 percent) lack distinct latitude and longitude coordinates. This is mainly because those individual buildings are listed using with the same latitude and longitude for the entire campus.

And of the “298,221 properties with latitude and longitude coordinates in the FRPP dataset, 78,624 (26 percent) lacked distinct latitude and longitude coordinates. For example, the FRPP dataset contained the same latitude and longitude coordinates for 2,123 real property assets located on the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina,” the report says.

Many of these kinds of data inaccuracy problems are blamed on agencies reporting identical coordinates for buildings located on the same campuses. Other problems occur when an asset is very long, such as an irrigation channel.

Search for existing data before spending on new data

As far as inaccuracies in tying building assets to the appropriate congressional representatives is concerned:

• For buildings, 1,736 (20 percent) of the 8,475 real property assets have outdated and incorrect congressional representatives listed; and
• For leases, 1,557 (21 percent) of the 7,392 real property assets have outdated and incorrect congressional representatives listed.

In one case, a particular congressman is listed as the representative for 83 properties and 35 leases in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, but he actually passed away in March 2025.

The report also states that the GSA is:

• Not complying with the GDA requirement to maintain a geospatial data strategy;
• Not complying with the GDA requirement to maintain an inventory of all geospatial data assets; and
• Not fully complying with the GDA requirement to search for existing geospatial data before procuring new data.

On the last point, the Geospatial Data Act “requires agencies to search all sources before spending funds on new geospatial data,” the report says. “This includes checking whether existing federal, state, local, or private data already meets the agency’s needs.”

The same situation was found to exist during the 2024 audit, resulting in management at that time undertaking to correct the problem and direct the “regional spatial data manager to search for existing geospatial data before purchasing new data”.

But the regional spatial data manager role was eliminated during 2025 workforce reductions, leaving no-one to address the issue.

The report makes a number of other observations and concludes with a list of recommendations, all of which have been agreed with by the GSA’s Chief Information Officer.