The recently released 2025 VA AI Inventory catalogs cases of AI use across the department, from clinical tools used during patient care to systems that help process benefits, automate records management and support customer service functions.

Among the systems identified is Ambient AI Scribe, a clinical documentation tool used during medical appointments.

According to VA, the technology listens to clinician-patient conversations and generates clinical notes, reducing administrative workload and allowing providers to spend more time focused on veterans.

VA’s disclosure also details widespread use — by more than 50,000 personnel — of commercial AI products across the department, including Microsoft Copilot Chat, Microsoft Teams Premium, Grammarly GitHub Copilot and other platforms for support tasks such as meeting transcription, document drafting, report summarization, information retrieval and software development.

Nearly Every Major VA Function Features AI

Health and medical applications represent the largest category of use cases, followed by systems supporting benefits administration, information technology, service delivery, financial management and administrative operations.

Applications identified in the inventory assist clinicians with imaging analysis and diagnostic workflows, identify disease risk, summarize records, analyze feedback, process forms and provide information through chat-based tools. VA also classifies its VA.gov chatbot as a high-impact use case.

VA says the chatbot is a tool that helps veterans locate information, complete tasks and access support services through self-service interactions.

Another high-impact use case, TERA Memorandum Automation, helps claims processors complete toxic exposure memoranda by pre-populating answers using information already contained in veterans’ records.

VA reports the system achieved a 98.12% accuracy rate and was used to assist with more than 181,000 forms, saving an estimated 54,581 work hours since deployment.

“VA is using artificial intelligence to improve how veterans access care, benefits and services, while also helping employees work more efficiently and effectively,” said VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven in a statement to Military Times.

According to Slaven, the inventory reflects “steady growth, stronger governance and expanding real-world impact, particularly in health care, benefits processing and operational efficiency.”

Inventory Provides A Detailed View Of Governance Requirements

For currently deployed high-impact systems, the inventory tracks whether agencies completed pre-deployment testing, impact assessments, independent reviews, monitoring processes, operator training, fail-safe mechanisms and appeal procedures.

Individual entries also identify potential risks associated with specific applications. For several health care systems, descriptions note that inaccurate outputs could contribute to downstream clinical or operational impacts if not detected and corrected, while also stating that providers receive training and oversight intended to mitigate those risks.

VA says all high-impact systems are required to complete an AI Impact Assessment and Risk Mitigation Plan before being put to work.

“Deployed high-impact AI use cases are continuously monitored,” said Slaven. “And any use case that cannot be brought into compliance is discontinued.”

Some AI systems previously reported by VA are now classified as retired. Those systems include healthcare, training and operational applications. The inventory does not specify why individual systems were deactivated.

Performance Data Varies Across Systems

The level of detail provided in the inventory varies from one system to another. Some entries provide measurable performance outcomes, testing results or operational metrics. Others provide only basic descriptions of intended functions and governance requirements.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which developed an AI Accountability Framework for federal agencies, says meaningful oversight requires documentation that can be independently reviewed.

“GAO’s AI Accountability Framework highlights the importance of documentation and a paper trail that an independent third party can follow,” GAO officials told Military Times. “As AI inputs and operations are not always visible, a central tenet to oversight is, ‘Show me, don’t just tell me.’”

GAO said organizations should be able to demonstrate who is responsible for AI systems, how those systems operate, whether they rely on quality and reliable data and how limitations are identified and addressed.

The agency also emphasized the importance of monitoring metrics such as accuracy and error rates and establishing thresholds that help determine when corrective action or retirement of a system is warranted.

Veterans Advocates Want Human Accountability

Chris Macinkowicz, deputy director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Veterans Service, said the organization’s concerns focus less on whether VA should use artificial intelligence and more on how those systems are managed after deployment.

“AI needs to be a tool, not an employee,” Macinkowicz told Military Times.

He said human review remains essential, particularly when systems are involved in processes affecting veterans.

“We need to make sure human eyes are on it afterwards,” he said. Macinkowicz also stressed the importance of continued evaluation after deployment.

“We need to have assurances from VA that they’re going to go back after these AI agents are deployed to make sure that they’re still accurate a month down, six months down, a year down [the road],” he said.

GAO officials said organizations should establish metrics that help determine when corrective action is needed and when an AI system should be retired because it no longer meets its intended objectives.

As VA expands the use of AI across healthcare, benefits processing and other operations, GAO officials said meaningful oversight depends on agencies being able to demonstrate, through documentation and measurable performance data, that systems continue operating as intended.

Tuesday’s report from the VA’s Office of Inspector General is based on surveys from late March and early April that were taken at 139 Veterans Health Administration facilities. Severe staffing shortages are not necessarily an indication of vacancies but refer to particular occupations that are difficult to fill.

The surveys were taken just weeks after it was reported in early March that the VA had planned to cut 80,000 jobs — out of 484,000 — through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. The VA later reduced the figure to nearly 30,000 jobs to be cut by this fiscal year’s end on Sept. 30.

President Donald Trump’s administration said Tuesday that the surveys are unreliable because they do not reflect actual vacancies, which VA officials said were in line with historical averages. But Democratic lawmakers warned that veterans won’t get the health care they need as VA positions become harder to fill.

The surveys reflected a 50% increase in the reporting of severe staffing shortages for specific jobs, both for clinical occupations that include doctors and psychologists and for non-clinical jobs that include police and custodial workers.

Nearly all of the facilities — 94% — reported a shortage for medical officer occupations that include doctors, while 79% reported shortages for nurses. The report noted that severe shortages for medical officers and nurses have been identified every year in the report since 2014.

Pete Kasperowicz, the VA’s press secretary, stressed in an email that the report is not based on vacancies and is therefore “not a reliable indicator of staffing shortages.”

“The report simply lists occupations facilities feel are difficult for which to recruit and retain, so the results are completely subjective, not standardized and unreliable,” Kasperowicz wrote.

He said that vacancy rates for doctors and nurses are 14% and 10%, respectively, which he said are lower than most other health care systems and in line with “normal VA historical averages.”

But Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, said the surveys reflect the Trump administration’s profound hostility toward the federal workforce and what she said are its plans to ultimately privatize the VA.

“This is a deliberate effort to incapacitate and to undermine veterans’ support for and approval of the care they receive in VA hospitals and clinics,” Simon said. “They’ll have to wait much longer for appointments. There won’t be specialists available. They’ll have no choice but to go to the private sector.”

Simon also noted the VA’s announcement last week that it was terminating collective bargaining agreements for most VA bargaining-unit employees, which could further hurt recruitment.

The VA said in a news release that the move will “make it easier for VA leaders to promote high-performing employees, hold poor performers accountable, and improve benefits and services to America’s Veterans.”

But U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said in a news release Tuesday that the Trump administration has made it harder for public servants to do their jobs “and ultimately harder for veterans to get the care they’ve earned.”

“We also know from recent jobs reports that applications to work at the VA are plummeting,” said Warner, a Democrat who represents the veteran-dense state of Virginia. “How do skyrocketing staffing shortages and declining applicant pools make it more ‘efficient’ for veterans to access the care and services they deserve? The answer is: they don’t.”

The 54-44 vote fell mainly along party lines, with only Nevada’s two Democratic senators — Jackie Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto — breaking ranks to side with Republicans on the confirmation.

Brown, 41, is now poised to take over one of five most senior leadership posts at VA, overseeing maintenance and operations at 155 national cemeteries in 42 states as well as commemorative sites in other locations.

He is a West Point alumnus who served in the Army for five years after graduation. During a deployment to Afghanistan in 2008, he was severely wounded by an improvised explosive device.

Brown suffered burns on nearly a third of his body, including his face and neck, and lost part of his hand in the attack. After his medical retirement from the military, he founded a firm that provided medications to veterans whose government benefits did not provide all the care they needed.

In a statement on social media late Tuesday night, Brown said he was “humbled and honored to give you all my best, again” in the new role.

Brown was tapped by President Donald Trump for the leadership post in early January, even before the new commander-in-chief was sworn into office. But his nomination has been stalled in the Senate for months by Democratic lawmakers upset over a host of department moves and what they claim is a lack of communication from VA Secretary Doug Collins.

Several senators have put holds on all VA nominees, but the Republican majority has the ability to override those blocks by going through time-consuming parliamentary procedures. Brown’s confirmation vote came amid a flurry of work on stalled nominations this week, ahead of a planned chamber recess for the month of August.

Trump has pushed lawmakers to cancel that recess and continue pushing through the list of stalled nominees. Republican leaders in the chamber so far have not committed to that, but are hoping to clear a significant portion of the backlog in coming days.

As such, Brown may not be the last senior VA leader to get a vote this week. On Tuesday, Republican leaders queued up a potential vote on senior Veterans Affairs advisor Cheryl Mason to serve as the next Inspector General of the department. Democrats have objected to her nomination because of questions about her independence in the watchdog role.

Brown is expected to be formally sworn in to his new role in the next few days.

The CFPB was founded in 2011 to serve as an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve, to ensure that financial products and services offered to Americans are fair and transparent. It fielded nearly 100,000 consumer complaints every month in 2024 from service members, veterans and their families, according to the agency’s web site.

The cases included credit reporting issues related to military moves, unfair mortgage practices involving VA home loans and financial scams specifically aimed at military members with limited financial education. Internal estimates said the agency helped return more than $175 million to veterans and military dependents in recent years.

But last week, in a purported cost-cutting move, the White House — and billionaire Elon Musk — moved to close the agency. Acting CFPB director Russell Vought said the office had become “woke and weaponized” and was no longer needed.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., told Military Times she strongly disagrees with the decision.

“Getting rid of the CFPB actually will lead to more waste, more fraud and more abuse,” Duckworth said. “We all know about companies targeting military families, the auto loans and the 20% interest rates, mortgage fraud, the payday lenders, the student loan frauds.

“We really need to educate our military men and women on what is out there, to really be more aware now of these tactics and not fall for them.”

In a speech on the House floor Wednesday, Democratic Party Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., echoed those same concerns.

“The American people did not vote for more scams, for more corporate greed,” Clark said. “They didn’t vote to have our service members go into more debt. They voted for people to fight for them, for lower costs, for their part in the American Dream.”

Advocacy groups have sued to prevent the closure of the board, although the timeline for a decision on the issue remains unclear. They have argued that financial scams are particularly problematic for military families, since debts can affect individuals’ security clearance status and ultimately undermine readiness.

White House officials have argued that the CFPB work can be picked up by other agencies, and that the federal government remains too overstaffed and unsustainable.

Meanwhile, Duckworth is calling for military charities to step up their work identifying and preventing fraud in the community.

“Since [the CFPB] started, there’s a whole new generation of recruits going through basic training who have never faced these problems without help,” Duckworth said. “And so financial literacy, I think, is going to have to be something that is re-injected back into the training we provide, especially for our youngest servicemen and women.”

The trio of high-level responsibilities for the just-confirmed Collins raised concerns among some lawmakers who said running the 480,000-employee department is a significant enough challenge without the additional tasks.

“Barely one week on the job, Doug Collins should have enough on his plate taking the reins of the largest health care system in the country,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“On top of it being a major conflict of interest for a Cabinet secretary to be tasked with oversight of his own position and agency, all three of these roles are too important for one individual to fill. [He] needs to step aside immediately and focus on serving veterans.”

A VA spokesperson dismissed those concerns, saying the department “has already made significant progress” in improving the department. “Sec. Collins looks forward to ensuring OSC and OGE uphold their important responsibilities while the administration finds permanent leaders for both organizations.”

The Office of Government Ethics provides ethics oversight across the executive branch and is designed to serve as an independent arbiter for those departments. That includes working as a watchdog for VA leaders.

Similarly, the Office of Special Counsel is an independent investigative and prosecutorial agency of the executive branch. It mainly focuses on federal employee protections, and fields whistleblower complaints from a host of federal agencies, including several within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Earlier this year, the office criticized Veterans Affairs leaders for failing to refund millions of dollars in canceled medical co-pay charges to veterans, despite knowing about the problem for years.

Both offices had vacancies in their leadership roles after President Donald Trump dismissed their previous leaders. Those job actions are being challenged in court.

Collins has served as a legal adviser for Trump since his first term in the White House, including aiding in his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to former President Joe Biden.

The White House has not unveiled its timeline for naming permanent replacements for the two offices. Administration officials also have not yet announced names for Collins’ deputy secretary at VA or two of the three undersecretary posts that require Senate confirmation.

In a brief notice posted to the inspector general’s website, the agency said the objective of the probe is to “Evaluate the United States Secret Service’s (Secret Service) process for securing former President Trump’s July 13, 2024 campaign event.”

There was no date given for when the investigation was launched. The notice was among a long list of ongoing cases that the inspector general’s office is pursuing.

President Joe Biden already had directed an independent review of the security at the rally.

The shooting has raised questions about how the gunman was able to climb onto a roof with a clear line of site to the former president, who was injured.

The 20-year-old shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to get within 135 meters (157 yards) of the stage where the Republican former president was speaking when he opened fire. That’s despite a threat on Trump’s life from Iran leading to additional security for the former president in the days before the Saturday rally.

A bloodied Trump was quickly escorted off the stage by Secret Service agents, and agency snipers killed the shooter. Trump said the upper part of his right ear was pierced in the shooting. One rallygoer was killed, and two others critically wounded.

Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle said the agency understands the importance of the review ordered by Biden and would fully participate in it as well as with congressional committees looking into the shooting. She said the agency was working to understand how Saturday’s shooting happened and to make sure something like it never does again.

The agency of roughly 7,800 staff members is responsible for protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents, their spouses and their minor children under the age of 16 and a few other high-level Cabinet officials such as the Homeland Security secretary.

MDA is developing the Next-Generation Interceptor after canceling a previous effort to field a redesigned kill vehicle in August 2019 for the ground-based interceptors which make up the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system (GMD) designed to protect the U.S. homeland from intercontinental ballistic missiles from Iran and North Korea.

MDA wants to field NGI by 2028, but Congress is pushing for an earlier deadline and industry teams have said they could deliver initial interceptors by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2027, one year ahead of schedule.

“The NGI program is on track to start product development in 2024 but the program is planning to overlap design and production activities to accelerate flight testing,” the GAO report states. “Any major design issues could disrupt this strategy.”

GAO found NGI’s schedule to be “already optimistic when compared to development timeframes of similar weapon systems,” and added that the agency is also struggling to meet testing goals across the board, which could further derail the ambitious schedule.

The program’s cost has also gone up by hundreds of millions of dollars in the last year, the GAO found. Even so, it has yet to rise above planned funding levels.

Yet the GAO said, “MDA officials expect further increases due to supply chain issues and rising material costs.”

On time

MDA is working to field NGI by 2028 as threats grow rapidly in complexity and capability.

While the NGI program is meeting schedule goals now, GAO showed skepticism that NGI would maintain its timeline. Historically, the office said, comparable technology development has taken longer.

The agency is buying long lead materials for the interceptors, particularly for ones to be used in upcoming flight tests, but GAO notes NGI designs “are not yet mature, and any changes could necessitate rework on interceptors currently in early production.”

The agency was carrying two teams through a competitive design phase. Lockheed Martin and its Aerojet Rocketdyne partner completed the preliminary design review for its NGI in September 2023 and a Northrop and RTX team passed through the same design review at the end of January.

But nearly a year prior to a deadline for two competing teams to reach a critical design review phase, MDA chose Lockheed Martin in April to move forward rather than continue with both teams into the next phase of technology development.

According to the GAO report, both NGI contractors “made progress developing critical technologies” and MDA plans to assess NGI’s critical technology maturation status prior to a product development decision expected in the third quarter of FY24.

NGI’s schedule has flight tests beginning roughly six years after MDA awarded the development contracts. GAO noted that a 2019 study by a federally funded research and development center found “kill vehicles, satellites and strategic systems” take roughly seven years from contract award to first flight.

Flight test schedules will have an impact, the GAO said, and MDA has not been able to stay on track even for GMD testing. NGI production, the GAO notes, is contingent on completing three intercept flight tests within two years.

“GMD program has never successfully executed more than two intercept flight tests within a span of 2 years since the program started testing operationally configured GMD interceptors in 2006,” the report states.

“NGI might face similar challenges, in part, because DOD plans for NGI flight testing to increase in difficulty with each successive test,” it adds.

On budget

The GAO found the NGI program’s development cost has already increased in its “early stages.” The Pentagon has anticipated the program cost to be “a few billion dollars higher” than MDA’s early estimates, which is in line with the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office’s independent cost assessment in 2021.

“NGI’s costs remain within the program’s current funding level, but the cost growth accumulated in the first 3 years of the program has reduced the government’s funding margin as a result of accelerated schedules,” GAO states. Moreover, GAO said typically the most significant cost growth happens later in development and production.

The rising cost, according to the office, is mostly due to contractors taking steps to mitigate schedule risk as well as growing material costs “which directly related to supply chain issues and were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

While MDA has traded cost for schedule in the first phases of the program, the agency did acknowledge that will not be “sustainable going forward,” the GAO notes.

Technical risk

In 2022, the Pentagon’s research and engineering branch found technical risk in the NGI program. MDA “disagreed” with a large portion of that assessment and GAO said the agency has “taken limited steps to address the identified risks.”

GAO reported MDA has completed all required survivability testing on component-level parts, but the agency “is not fully addressing risks associated with NGI’s threat requirements.”

And MDA is not “fully developing” models and simulation that it needs to verify technology maturity and performance, the report states.

GAO found other DOD components like GMD’s Technical Direction Agent, U.S. Northern Command, MDS Operational Test Agency and the DoD’s director of operational test and evaluation were concerned about the lack of modeling and simulation capabilities for the program and the agency’s ability to get the needed capabilities developed in time for ground testing expected in FY26.

“CAPE officials told us in February 2024 that foregoing adequate simulation capabilities directly amplifies risks to the program because MDA will be relying on these same models and simulations for verification activities in lieu of more extensive flight testing,” the report states. “CAPE officials added that insufficient modeling and simulation would potentially leave some of the most critical questions regarding NGI’s performance unanswered.”

But MDA told GAO that it would ensure “NGI-specific requirements for the MDS-level modeling and simulation framework are identified, planned for, and implemented,” according to the report. This includes aligning development of an all-digital MDS-level simulator with the program.

“DOT&E officials told us this new digital simulator will be essential for conducting NGI operational assessments because it will provide significantly greater simulations capabilities, once developed,” the GAO states.

The Government Accountability Office unveiled its annual report on the Defense Department’s buying practices, covering many of the largest items in the military’s shopping cart, from aircraft carriers to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

GAO studied more than 30 of the most expensive items on order, costing a little more than $1 trillion. The total cost of those fell by about $1.7 billion since the year before, due to changes in inflation and a drop in purchases.

Still, several of these big-ticket items are running above the contracted price. The estimated total may rise, the report warned, plus there are issues with speed.

For the largest weapons programs still awaiting delivery, it’s taking 10 years for the Pentagon to place an order and then receive the system. That’s longer than the average noted last year.

But for programs that have started delivering, the delays are even longer. The average time, the authors found, rose from 8 years to 11 years.

Alongside these major programs, GAO also studied some meant to be smaller and more nimble. These “middle-tier acquisitions,” or MTA, work like a toll road alongside a highway — a quicker route for weapons that the Pentagon needs more urgently.

The trouble is that the speed limit isn’t much faster, the report found.

“Although the MTA pathway was designed for speed, GAO found most MTA programs do not plan to implement leading practices to facilitate that speed,” it said.

These programs are meant to reach the field within five years, according to the Pentagon’s own guidance. However, GAO found some middle-tier programs are still following a “linear” process: five years for prototyping and another five for development.

“While the MTA pathway offers flexibilities to create efficiencies in the acquisition process, the warfighter may continue to wait years — if not more than a decade — for a solution that may ultimately no longer be relevant,” according to the report.

One of the core problems the Pentagon faces as it tries to buy weapons moving forward is purchasing software. Weapons, like technology more broadly, depend more on the lines of code that make them work. To avoid going obsolete, that software must stay up to date.

But the DOD struggles to buy this evergreen technology, and one of the reasons listed in the report is employees. The department doesn’t have enough people who understand software, the report argued. Instead, many of the most software-intense programs in the Pentagon require the expertise of contractors.

“DOD has taken initial steps to establish a cadre of personnel with software expertise, but its efforts are in early stages,” the report said. “While DOD expects to request more funding, as of March 2024, the cadre consisted of one federal employee with limited assistance.”

GAO offered three main recommendations: strategies to make MTA programs move faster, clearer guidance on the Pentagon’s software workforce, and the funding and goals needed for that workforce.

The top deputy for Pentagon acquisition and sustainment, who has since moved to a policy role, partially agreed with the recommendations and said some may be included in the DOD’s next update to its buying practices, expected this month.

Ashish Vazirani, acting Under Secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, said in a May 28 report that other federal agencies paid entry-level nurses “substantially more,” and that his office is working in conjunction with others to add and update special salary rates to attract and retain employees at medical facilities. It’s using the Department of Veterans Affairs as a model.

“The agency is fully engaged and postured to continue to maintain or achieve pay parity with the VA and receive competitive special salary rates that align with current market pay,” the office said in its response to the inspector general report.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which at its height saw a 150,000 weekly hospitalization rate in the U.S., severely disrupted the federal health care sector. The Bureau of Prisons, Veterans Health Administration and Medicare- and Medicaid-operated nursing homes were understaffed during the pandemic, federal data shows.

While it’s unlikely anything could’ve prepared the federal government for such an emergency, the Pentagon had been experiencing medical personnel shortages even before the coronavirus spread in 2020. As of last year, inspector general identified at least 6,000 vacant civilian positions in its sample of medical facilities, with nearly a third operating at 30% vacant or more.

Officials blamed the shortage on an inability to set competitive pay and other instances of bureaucratic red tape slowing down onboarding for health care workers. Shortages were particularly acute at medical centers serving metro areas, where pay lagged even more given the higher costs of living and incomparable private sector rates.

Workers became burned out, with some working 80 to 100 hours per week. Others couldn’t get access to bases that had the resources they needed. For service members, the effects of understaffing led to a decrease in preventative screenings and care, and delays in deployments because mandatory COVID-19 tests couldn’t be processed quickly enough.

“Service members left the military because of their experiences during the COVID‑19 pandemic, such as continued expectations of filling in for callouts and working overtime,” according to the report.

One unnamed official interviewed cited a delay in diagnosis and treatment for a tumor of a pediatric patient because a majority of the available doctors were deployed elsewhere for pandemic response. Another gave an example of a patient who died by suicide three days after visiting the emergency department, where psychiatrists were not able to evaluate patients in person due to pandemic protocols, low staffing and “task saturation.”

“… A senior enlisted leader at another [medical treatment facility] stated that their health care personnel were exhausted from the extra work caused by personnel shortages, and they were worried that it was only a matter of time before a provider would ‘miss something,’” according to the report.

Madigan Army Medical Center at on Joint Base Lewis-McChord logged the highest vacancy rate at 38%. Close behind was the 88th Medical Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at 36% and the 51st Medical Group at Osan Air Base at about a third.

So far, DoD has leveraged Title 38 pay flexibilities for physicians and dentists, but not for nurses. But a separate report submitted to Congress in 2023 notes that registered nurses and licensed practical nurses are most likely to leave the Defense Department in search of other work. They also account for about 46% of the overall Defense Health Agency workforce.

With approval from the federal government’s HR office, these authorities that adjust the usual pay rules can allow agencies to offer more money for certain positions that are either hard to fill or in demand. However, the usefulness of that is somewhat dampened by the complexities and limitations involved with implementing them, officials said.

Agencies have to grapple with available funding, collective bargaining and pay caps when adjusting pay rates that can limit the range of effectiveness of these authorities even once they’re granted. Some medical treatment facilities were able to attract nurses with a special salary rate, but that was not uniform across all areas. Some centers were advised to consider alternatives before requesting a special rate, according to internal guidance.

In any case, officials said in the report that it stood up a tiger team last year to reevaluate pay.

In a sample of the more than 340 operations and maintenance contracts awarded by the Public Buildings Service, the General Services Administration’s inspector general found nearly 70% of open work orders have not been filled, and of those that were, 43% took longer than they should have.

This risks federal buildings becoming “more vulnerable to excessive wear and tear,” leading to “higher repair and replacement costs” and potentially unsafe working conditions, according to the audit, which investigated GSA-owned buildings in Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Texas.

At the Jacob Javits building in New York, for example, 44% of the schedule preventative maintenance had not been done on time. That building primarily houses the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, FBI and Court of International Trade.

The federal government’s real estate situation has been thrust in the spotlight post pandemic. Higher rates of employees teleworking have made some office space obsolete, while other buildings have seen the shift as an opportunity to remodel or rethink space to be more flexible to accommodate the hybrid nature of work.

In a recent hearing before lawmakers, Jason Miller, a top official from the Office of Management and Budget, said agencies are about 80% compliant with orders to have their workforces onsite half of the time. And about 50% of all workers is not eligible to telework in the first place, he said. However, “extra” space that is either underutilized or outdated has become a complicated topic, as reducing, repurposing and repopulating federal offices all cost money and resources, which the audit shows are thin even just for existing work.

Officials interviewed in the report said at five of six sampled sites, there was not enough contract staff to meet the level of work, especially for larger buildings. There appears to be a discrepancy between personnel needs because staff at the actual place where maintenance will be done don’t get to weigh in on whether a contractor’s proposed staff levels is sufficient before an award is made.

Frequent turnover and lack of skills also contribute to hired staff being ill-equipped to meet the work, the report found.

In other instances of lapsed repairs or foregone maintenance, contractors and federal officials overseeing the work have different understandings of what a contract requires, and the Public Building Service, an office within GSA, has not enforced its own contract terms.

“One contractor did not inspect any completed work orders even though its contract required quality control inspections to be submitted monthly,” according to the audit.

Inspection checks were sometimes marked as a “pass” even without the work having been done, and sometimes they didn’t occur at all, without any repercussions.

In another example cited in the report, the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt building in Oregon had a backup water tank for fire sprinklers that had not been cleaned, as required, “in a long time.” Yet the contractor marked the inspection as “complete,” even though a subsequent visit revealed murky, green water so opaque a subcontractor couldn’t see through it when it sent a submersible down to look for cracks.

In its response to the audit, PBS said it would agree to enforce technical evaluations of bids pre-award and would issue clarifying guidance to ensure the expectations of a contract are adhered to.

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