ACHP Section 3 Report to the President

Historic property information management—the FRPP and other systems: Over the past three years federal agencies have improved their individual databases and reporting standards to better account for their historic properties. This has been achieved in conjunction with the efforts of the Federal Real Property Profile (FRPP) that was created in part to assist agencies in better identifying and managing their real property holdings. The FRPP is managed by the Federal Real Property Council (FRPC), and houses information about the nature, use, and extent of the federal government’s real property assets. It contains data on all executive branch agency real property assets within and outside the United States, including improvements on federal land, except when otherwise required for reasons of national security, in accordance with EO 13327 ( Federal Real Property Management, 2004). A preliminary analysis of patterns and trends in FRPP data on historic properties is presented in Appendix 1. Some agencies also continue to use separate asset management systems because their needs go beyond what the FRPP is designed primarily to document: above-ground real property, so that information on archaeological sites, TCPs, and historic districts is either lacking or incomplete. The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) report (Federal Real Property: Improved Data Needed to Strategically Manage Historic Buildings, 2012) recommended that GSA collaborate with FRPC member agencies and others to address the need for improved data on historic buildings in the FRPP. In 2013, the ACHP created a work group to address these concerns. Comprising representatives of GSA, DoD, DHS, VA, DOI (including NPS and BLM), the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO), and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the work group developed and approved recommendations to improve the “historical status” field of the FRPP, which were submitted to GSA’s Office of Government-wide Policy and incorporated in the 2014 edition (and subsequent editions) of the Data Dictionary. For the most part, though, and aside from formal listing on the NRHP, historic properties information continues to be included in inventories maintained by individual federal agencies, and also by state, tribal, and local governments. This causes problems for a comprehensive, searchable, and accessible inventory of the nation’s historic properties which could provide a strong planning tool, especially in the case of disasters, emergencies, and expanding and updating infrastructure. Linking existing lists of historic properties and expanding them into a comprehensive inventory would require encouraging and supporting use of standards addressing common data formats and management tools, including digitization and GIS interface across federal agency, state, and tribal lines. For the past 10 years, the ACHP has continued to explore the development of such a comprehensive digital inventory of federal historic properties for federal, state, tribal agencies, and industry to assist in meeting the requirements of Sections 106 and 110. The ability to characterize historic properties within a particular area could greatly speed up the siting of new infrastructure and resource extraction that affect historic properties on federal lands. Such an inventory was one recommendation made in the 2007 Preserve America report and in the ACHP’s The National Historic Preservation Program at 50: Priorities and Recommendations for the Future. Such an inventory would include the “information necessary for management, planning, and decision making ... government agencies, Indian tribes, businesses, and citizens need usable information as the basis for decisions on protection, funding, revitalizing, and interpreting historic properties.”

IN A SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP: A REPORT ON FEDERAL HISTORIC PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 2018 | 17

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