If knowledge is power, as the English scientist and politician Sir Francis Bacon is credited with saying, then knowing how and when to use force can be thought of as a kind of superpower. It requires…
Author: Government Solutions
Spotlight: USAID
Since its heyday in the Kennedy Administration more than half a century ago, nonmilitary foreign aid has had detractors and defenders in roughly equal measure. On the con side, critics urge that money spent building power…
Spotlight: CFTC
Founded in 1974, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent agency charged with regulating the futures and options markets. As these markets have grown with the “financialization” of the economy, the scope and…
GSA Lease and Sales Market Trends
It is well-documented that since Freeze The Footprint began in 2012, the GSA and its tenant agencies have been actively pursuing consolidation and downsizing in order to meet these requirements. The question is – how has…
Spotlight: Farm Service Agency
If the Farm Service Agency (FSA) sounds as if it might be some forgotten holdover of the alphabet-soup New Deal of nine decades ago, there is good reason. Although it was formally instituted only in 1996,…
Spotlight: Secret Service
How much office and other space does the US Secret Service occupy? That turns out to be a difficult question with a simple answer: It’s secret. Its Washington headquarters, a building on H Street, looks nondescript,…
Spotlight: SBA
“The chief business of the American people is business,” said President Calvin Coolidge, speaking before a convention of newspaper editors 90 years ago. (His bon mot is often shortened to “the business of America is business.”)…
Making Sense of Cap Rates for GSA Properties
One of the most important (and perplexing) concepts we run into on a daily basis in the GSA property marketplace is the concept of “cap rate.” The cap rate has long been used as a benchmark…
An Executive Order Mandates Energy Savings
It’s hardly news that the largest single consumer of energy in the United States is the federal government, with its stock of 360,000 buildings and 650,000 fleet vehicles. What is surprising, though, is the extent to…
Spotlight: CIA
Thanks to extensive media coverage, both positive and negative, and to countless spy novels and movies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the best-known intelligence unit within the U.S. government, virtually synonymous with intelligence generally. In…