Bring Your Own Office

A pretty good argument can be made that while the government is generally not on the leading edge of new practices, it’s a sign that those practices are here to stay when the public sector picks up on them. Within a few days of CoreNet Global reporting that many US and Canadian office tenants may decrease their average per-worker allocation to 100 square feet or less in the next five years, the Washington Post carried an interview with key executives at the General Services Administration charting their efforts to consolidate the GSA’s own headquarters space.

Specifically, the GSA’s $162-million renovation of its HQ is doing away with offices and assigned workspaces, as part of an effort to encourage telecommuting at the agency that manages 370 million square feet of federal office space. GSA administrator Martha Johnson told the Post that the headquarters revamp is “actually creating less office space for each person, so we can allow more people to report to work here when they need to.