Katy Kale and Robin Carnahan

Katy Kale took control of the General Services Administration in late January, at what was clearly a difficult time for the sprawling agency that essentially acts as the federal government’s property manager and buyer.

Her predecessor, Emily Murphy, became a major national news story, having deliberately delayed ascertaining Joe Biden’s victory in the November presidential election by nearly two weeks, thereby delaying the disbursement of federal monies for the transition from the Trump to Biden administrations. Murphy’s move shined an extremely bright light on what’s normally a low-key, however powerful, bureaucracy.

Kale, who spent more than a year and a half as the GSA’s chief of staff during the Obama administration before working in the private sector, also took over at a time when the GSA was, and is, actively streamlining its operations and consolidating its space.

Part of this is a focus on efficiency, and part of it is the GSA seizing opportunities: Through fiscal year 2024, 325 GSA leases in the D.C. area representing 22.4 million square feet of federally occupied office space are set to expire. The agency could save hundreds of millions of dollars renegotiating or simply shedding some of these leases. Such exits, of course, would ripple through the D.C. real estate market.

Overseeing this work will fall largely to Kale’s likely successor, though. In April, Biden nominated Robin Carnahan, a former Missouri secretary of state, to head the GSA on a permanent basis. As of mid-June, it appeared that Carnahan’s nomination enjoyed enough bipartisan support to win Senate approval.