The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has worked diligently in support of real property asset management through continual emphasis on real property reconciliation, real property inventories, and real property appraisals, resulting in auditable real property depreciation values.
Through its initiative to improve management accountability, USDA instituted a major corporate project to implement the first department-wide real property automated information system, the Corporate Property Automated Information System (CPAIS). The most significant achievement of the development and implementation of CPAIS is that it provides an integrated solution, which standardizes USDA real property accounting, real property business processes and provides management of the entire real property portfolio including owned real property, commercial leases, and General Services Administration (GSA) assignments.
USDA reported more than $8 billion in real property assets in FY 2002. As the second largest landholder in the Federal government, USDA owns approximately 190 million acres of land and occupies approximately 51 million square feet of owned and leased space. In both FY 2002 and FY 2003, USDA achieved a clean opinion on its audited financial statements, in part, through the efforts to reconcile, account for and value real property assets. In order to sustain the clean opinion and to improve overall management of real property assets, USDA began a program to provide an automated solution for managing real property.
CPAIS provides the capability to manage assets at a corporate and agency level, addresses security and continuity of operations issues. It improves analytic capabilities, allowing increased asset utilization, cost management, analysis and reduction of maintenance expenses. CPAIS puts USDA in an improved position should it face a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
Notably, USDA’s Corporate Property Automated Information System is a fundamental and critical corporate system that provides the ability to manage USDA’s real property portfolio for the first time in USDA history. USDA sought and achieved a cost effective and efficient methodology for implementing this department-wide system, by standardizing and re-engineering an existing USDA agency system. USDA went from concept to department-wide system implementation in 18 months; delivering capabilities, functions and information never before available either to agencies or the Department. This achievement places USDA at the ready for managing real property assets.
CPAIS is now being expanded to include personal property. After implementation of the personal property module, USDA will be able to shut down two legacy systems, the Property Management System (PROP) and Equipment Management Information System (EMIS). CPAIS will then become the corporate, administrative system for both real and personal property department-wide.
For more information, contact Denise R. Hayes on 202-720-7283, or by email at denise.hayes@usda.gov.
