The White House has recently launched two new online tools that will help Americans track how the government manages federal real estate. This is an issue relevant to citizens since government property is a federal source for billions of wasted taxpayer dollars.

The attention to government property comes as part of the Campaign to Cut Waste, an initiative spearheaded by President Obama and Vice President Biden that seeks to eliminate misspent taxpayer dollars in all the agencies and departments of the federal government. As part of the campaign, federal agencies have been called to stop annual wasting of tax dollars that have been used to maintain tens of thousands of properties accumulated by the federal government over the years that are no longer needed or in use. Through this effort, the Obama Administration wants to dispose of government real estate in order to improve real estate management and save taxpayer dollars. President Obama set an initial savings goal of $3 billion for the end of 2012.

The first new tool developed for the issue of federal real estate is the White House Excess Property map illustrating the location of buildings and structures across the country that have been designated as excess to the government because they are no longer in use. The map visualizes opportunities for cutting federal real estate waste and saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of the properties face demolition or transfers and will therefore reduce operating and maintenance costs that prove expensive to taxpayers. The White House has also created a dashboard on Performance.gov where Americans can monitor the government’s progress in cutting waste and reaching the proposed savings goal of $3 billion by the end 2012. To date, the dashboard reveals that we have already reached $1.5 billion in savings.