GSA launches governmentwide property sales site

The General Services Administration has unveiled an Internet portal that will act as a central clearinghouse for selling all excess government property.

The GovSales.gov portal, launched last week, is part of the broader Federal Asset Sales e-government initiative managed by GSA. The Web site got off to a rocky start on its launch day -- it was offline for more than 24 hours due to a software glitch and an incorrect link -- but now is up and offers everything from stainless steel sinks and exercise bikes to aircraft engines.

The site is designed to be the single point of access for the purchase of government-owned surplus items, and seized or forfeited assets.

So far, two of four Office of Management and Budget-approved agency-run sales operations for disposing of excess personal property have provided information to the portal. They are GSA's Auctions site and the Agriculture Department's Centralized Excess Property Operation.

The Treasury Department's Forfeiture Fund and the U.S. Marshals Service Asset Forfeiture Program have yet to go live on the site, but GSA has asked the agencies for a transition plan to help them prepare to moving their sales operations to GovSales.gov. A contract protest is holding up Treasury's migration, and the Marshals Service's program is highly decentralized with sales centers spread around the country, said Rob Miller, program manager for Federal Asset Sales.

Agencies that have not been approved by OMB to act as sales centers themselves will be required to sell all surplus property through one of the approved centers, and thereby will have excess personal property listed on GovSales.gov. The Defense Department will be excluded because its contracts for selling excess property will be in place for several more years and cannot be changed easily, GSA officials said.

All three centers for the sale of government owned or seized land or buildings -- operated by GSA and the Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development departments -- already are listing their sales information on the portal.

Because the actual sales are conducted by the agency sales centers and GovSales.gov is simply a portal for making the purchases, the total number of sales to date is unavailable at this point, a GSA spokeswoman said.

Miller said a report on the number of Web site visitors and sales will be produced every month and the data for October will be available sometime in November.

During fiscal 2007, GSA plans to spend about $200,000 advertising GovSales.gov in national newspapers, trade and industry publications and posters on the Washington Metro. It also might buy ads on the radio.

GSA is providing funding for the site this year, but officials said they have yet to decide how it will be funded in the future.