Rob Trubia Hey, welcome back to another episode of GSA Does That!? Thanks for listening. This is the podcast that uncovers the stories behind the federal agency delivering effective and efficient government. I'm your host, Robert Trubia. And today, in our sixth episode, we're uncovering the workplace of the future. In our previous episode, we heard from GSA administrator Robin Carnahan and OPM director Kiran Ahuja, who discuss the importance of recruiting and retaining a talented federal workforce. Rob Trubia Today, we continue our conversation on the future of work, focusing on how the federal workplace itself is evolving with GSA's involvement in real estate and acquisition. The agency plays a critical role in shaping the future of work for the entire federal government. Throughout this episode, we'll be joined by three of GSA's top leaders who will provide us with valuable insights into the workplace of the future. Rob Trubia Katy Kale, Deputy Administrator of GSA. Nina Albert, Commissioner of the Public Building Service known as PBS, and Sonny Hashmi, Commissioner of Federal Acquisition Service for FAS. Together, we’ll explore what it means to build the workplace of the future and the impact these changes have on our customers, employees and most importantly, the public we serve. This episode is about GSA's commitment to creating accessible, flexible and functional workplaces where every individual can do their best work and how, by focusing on sustainability, human centered design and technological advancements, GSA aims to deliver great value for taxpayers while allowing federal agencies to achieve their missions more effectively than ever before. Rob Trubia Now, let's dive into our discussion with our esteemed guests. As agency leaders, they will share their perspectives on GSA effectiveness and building the workplace of the future. We'll explore the vital elements that they believe are crucial to achieving this vision and why the workplace means so much more than where you do your job. So thanks for joining us on GSA Does That!? Rob Trubia And remember, this podcast is available on all major platforms, so please be sure to subscribe. For more information about this episode and others, visit us online at GSA.gov/podcast. Welcome, Katy, Sonny and Nina. Thanks for being on the podcast today. You know, I really enjoy asking our guests at the start of each episode to share with our listeners a little bit about themselves, maybe where they're from in their path to their current role. Rob Trubia Katy maybe could start us out. Katy Kale Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me here, Rob. I am a huge fan of podcasts in general. I've been listening to all of these podcasts as they've come out and I really love talking about GSA, so this is just a perfect day for me. So I am the deputy administrator here at GSA, which means I am the chief operating officer of this 12,000 person organization. Katy Kale And this is my second tour here at GSA. I also served as chief of staff here from 2015 to 2017. But honestly, I was a huge fan of the agency long before that. I like to say that I was a customer of GSA, long before I was an employee of GSA. I worked for about ten years in the United States Senate, and during that time, I did occasionally work with GSA, but I really got to know the people and the mission of the agency. Katy Kale When I served as director of operations for the Obama-Biden presidential transition, which, as you may or may not know, GSA runs the presidential transitions. Then I moved to the White House, where I was a senior leader and ran White House Office of Management and Administration. And in that position, I was supported by the GSA White House Service Center. Katy Kale And so I may just be here today giving you ideas for a future podcast, I hope. Rob Trubia Well, that's great. Thank you for sharing with all of that. And thanks for being a fan of the podcast, which is cool. We needed as many fans as possible. It’s a brand new podcast. It is doing well, but having fans is awesome and you are more than welcome to share. Any ideas, any listeners out there, any ideas you have for podcasts that you'd like us to do? Rob Trubia You know, we have to do a podcast about presidential transition team. I mean, how does that all work that we run that? That is definitely fits inside. GSA does that, like really? So that's pretty fascinating. Thank you so much, Sonny. How about you? Sonny Hashmi Rob Thanks for having me on today. I'm currently serving as the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner for GSA, which means that I oversee an organization that is hugely impactful for operations across the federal government. We manage close to $87 billion worth of buying and selling activity every year. This ranges from everything from buying commodities such as office supplies and furniture, all the way to highly sophisticated capabilities that the government needs. Sonny Hashmi Everything from satellite technology to drones that to to achieve its mission. And we are at the heart of all of that activity. My background personally is in technology. I served and actually two capacities GSA currently as FAS commissioner, but previously I also served as the agency's CIO and at the time where we were putting a lot of effort and energy towards cloud modernization and developing programs like Fedramp. Sonny Hashmi And I'm also just excited to be back here. Since 2021, I've had a variety of public and private sector roles in my career, so I understand both how the industry experience works when they interact with the government, what challenges they face. And in my current role, have the ability to continue to to modify and improve that experience so that we can create a much more thriving marketplace, create more opportunities for small businesses, and serve our customers better. Sonny Hashmi As Katy mentioned, I'm also a third generation public servant. My grandfather was a schoolteacher his entire career, and my dad served in the military for an entire career. And I've served both in the D.C. city government as well as now in the federal government for a number of years. And it's just a privilege to serve. And I'm excited to be part of this podcast today and look forward to the conversation. Rob Trubia Cool. Well, thank you. Thanks for being there. We're excited to have you. Nina, how about you? Nina Albert Well, I am the commissioner of the Public Building Service and I oversee about 370 million square feet of government space across the United States and the U.S. territories. The public building service works with other federal agencies to get the space they need and carry out their missions on behalf of the American people. So I feel really excited and honored to be in this position. Nina Albert How I got here was sort of a long and winding road of a career. My background is in real estate development and economic development. Prior to GSA I was in charge of a real estate portfolio for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. So if you're from the D.C. area, you might know it as WMATA or just Metro and at Metro, I was responsible for redeveloping Metro's transit oriented development. Nina Albert So any development around metro stations that was really exciting work. I also got to spearhead Metro's office consolidation and headquarters move, so I feel like I really know what agencies are going through right now and some of the push and pull of decisions around consolidation. But as Sonny said, I have a similar background. I've worked in the private sector, I've worked in public sector. Nina Albert I also used to work for local D.C. government, just like Sonny did. And I'm a U.S. Army veteran as well. So. Well, anyway, just really proud and excited to be here. And this topic today about the future of work and the future of the workplace could not be more important to the public building service and also to me. Nina Albert And I'm just really excited to be able to influence what we're doing with federal real estate now. Rob Trubia Well, I appreciate you sharing that with us. You know, I'm just curious as I think when I think about the three of you that I'm that I'm talking to, it's it's it's super interesting because you have such an effect on as we go forward in the future. And I'm thinking, you know, as agency leaders, what do you all believe is important for GSA's effectiveness when looking to build the workplace of the future? Rob Trubia Katy, maybe you can start us out. Katy Kale So here's the thing. When we're talking about the workplace of the future, the future of work is right now we are in it. We have been in it for a while. And so we have to be smart about what we do to meet not only this moment, but also the next five, ten, 20 years. We need to be focused on that. Katy Kale Right now, one of our main roles, at GSA, is to help ensure that there are workspaces that empower public servants to do their best. And when we think about work environment, we think about people, space and technology. And you'll notice that I put people first because every decision that we in and our federal partners are making about government workplaces will impact federal employees as well as our customers, which ultimately include the American people. Katy Kale And so we have to keep that end goal of people in mind. And the traditional workspace is changing and adapting. But the good news is GSA has long standing teams of experts in the House to help us navigate this world. And I'm sure Nina can talk about the team that she has within the public building service, and they're helping all of the the agencies modernize and optimize their federal footprint. Katy Kale We're using technology to help get the word out. There's a really cool website that we have workplace.gsa.gov, and they're rolling out some really cool new new tools on that website. At the same time, Sonny's team and the Federal Acquisition Service is helping agencies quickly find and buy the the products and and that technology that I mentioned and services that they need to ensure that all of our workplaces function effectively and efficiently. Katy Kale But as the like I said before, as the COO of this organization, I just want to note that the GSA has always walked the walk, not just talk the talk. We are an agency that really has helped everyone else adapt to this type of work environment. And so we are tasked with and really embrace leading by example. And that's everything from our own space consolidation that happened here in D.C. several years ago. Katy Kale Pre-pandemic, we moved an entire department actually several times into our headquarters. And at the same time we did that, we were also really championing hybrid work policies. So we've been doing this well before the pandemic. I like to say we've been doing this for decades, so we know what other agencies might be going through right now. And and it really is showing because other agencies look to us for advice on how they can be doing this, not only with physical space and technology, but policies and culture shifts that really will impact people. Katy Kale So we're we love to lead by example. And this is just one of the ways that we do that in this agency. Rob Trubia And I think what I've observed is GSA is not only leading the federal government, it's leading really industry in a lot of ways, but particularly in some of the major cities like DC. People are looking at GSA, seeing what they're doing and consolidation of buildings and footprints and innovation of technology is huge at GSA. So technology that allows a lot of things possible that didn't used to be possible. Rob Trubia And I think like so many of us know, that COVID just ramped everything up. GSA was still doing it, like you were saying, they were still doing it. COVID happened and everything got put on, you know, full afterburner. Katy Kale I will say, Rob, that because GSA is a nationwide organization, we have we have people all over the country, we're able to really innovate and run pilots and try things out in whether it's our headquarters or it's a field office, because it's not necessarily a one size fits all. But there are a lot of fits for a lot of sizes. Katy Kale And we were able to do that without an impact, a negative impact to our mission. And I think that that's really important. Rob Trubia So in this on the second floor at GSA headquarters at 18 F you have the workplace of the future. And it's just it's fascinating. It really is. We'll talk about that a little bit more later on in the episode. But it's just fascinating. It just shows that GSA exactly is just trying to be nimble and know that federal workplaces are different everywhere. Rob Trubia They can be tiny, they can be massive. They're they're housed all the time, 24, seven, sometimes they're just people are popping in for different meetings. So the ability to have different types of technology, different types of furniture, different types of setups, conference rooms, all of that. And then not only are you showing that which is amazing and it's beautiful and it's modern and it's interesting, then GSA makes it easy to get for the federal agency. Rob Trubia So it's really it's fascinating. Nina, maybe you could share a little bit. Nina Albert Sure. Well, first of all, I think you hit on the key saying of how we were, which is we work to support our customers. The agency ultimately has to be the one that is creating the right space for their people as well as delivering a real estate strategy that supports their agency mission. What we're there to do is to really partner with them, be a thought leader in terms of what their plans might be, either from a workplace perspective or from a longer range real estate perspective. Nina Albert So where there is a is a thought partner, but we also deliver the work to. Right. Like once those plans have been set, the budgets have been set. I like to say GSA deliver and we've had great track record with that. You mentioned what we call the Workplace Innovation Lab as an example of that, right? That is a I'm really excited about the initiative that we have that we call Workplace 2030. Nina Albert Ten years ago, we had an initiative that we called Workplace 2020. Because workplace trends do change, they evolve over time how people work evolves. And so workplace 2030 is really a focus on how the workplace and the technology that supports work needs to evolve so that people can have a frictionless or seamless experience from home in the office or in the field. Nina Albert We often forget that there's a huge amount of work that happens on a construction site. In our case, if you're an FBI agent out in the field or if you're an inspector for the EPA, right, There's all this different kinds of work. And it really you have to be enabled regardless of where your work technology is, that connective tissue, it allows people to deliver at a very with information at their fingertips, with systems at their fingertips. Nina Albert And the workplace is just a component of that. But the Workplace Innovation Lab, which you talked about, which is at GSA's headquarters, is really twofold. It does a couple of different things. It allows private companies to showcase the innovations that they've made over the last two years, because what they're trying to do is create more flexibility within the workplace. Nina Albert As everybody knows, you know, pre-pandemic, things were quite static. You build out an office and then it would stay that way for like ten years or you, you know, implement technology infrastructure and you'd have to constantly. And that would be kind of a big hurdle to change. So now, both for furniture manufacturers as well as technology providers are trying to look at lower that initial both cost and implementation work in what is otherwise a pretty fixed environment. Nina Albert So in the Workplace Innovation Lab, you'll see furniture that has multiple uses that can easily be moved around and you'll see technology infrastructure that also is much more flexible and movable. So that's what we're trying to demonstrate at what a furniture and technology providers are trying to showcase. The Workplace Innovation Lab also works as what you said, which is a demonstration for different ways of working. Nina Albert So as an employee of Agency X, I can come in. I know that my team is interested in working in a more agile way and you can test out different vignettes or different areas to see what style of workplace fits your work type best. And it's really supposed to lower the access and make it much, much easier for agencies to access different ways of working and employees and make individual reservations for a day or a week or for a month. Nina Albert Teams can also do that, like a whole team can come in, reserve a portion of the lab and see how they work best together. So it's really to try and make it as accessible as possible, as easy as possible for people and agencies to test out new modes of working and test out new technologies and furniture. That and I think that really that engagement makes it really exciting. Nina Albert So there's kind of these long term plans, analytical work that needs to happen. But in the meantime, we want to give people access to the latest and greatest so that they can test things out and feel confident in the decisions. Rob Trubia And you really are. It's really fascinating what I was at 18 F just about a month ago. You go to one part of the building, you know, where it's still being renovated and you can see what it used to be like to work for the government, what it used to be like, the environment used to go and then you go to the second floor and oh my goodness, it'll blow you away. Rob Trubia It's it's stuff I've never seen before. And in Fortune 500 companies haven't even seen this where some of the the pods to sit in and some of the the break rooms and the conference rooms and to get that stuff in your own agency, to get that stuff in Nebraska, California, Alaska, wherever it might be. Sonny, you've anticipated this all along. Rob Trubia You knew this was coming out easy and how difficult it is, is it to get the stuff to where you really want it to be in your department? Sonny Hashmi Yeah. Rob, thank you. So so I think you I think you tee it up really well that you can imagine, you know, as as GSA explores this new model of working and new models, the workplace, it's a combined exercise that combined it brings together real estate solution, technology solution and other related capabilities. In fact, you know, a lot of the working affect everything that we do as an agency. Sonny Hashmi It may affect how you make decisions around how you manage your vehicle fleet or what kind of utility you need to engage with, what kind of office supplies you need, furniture solutions. At FAS, we have a breadth of capabilities that affect all these areas. Right? And so the the exercise for us, the most important thing for us becomes how do we tune in and learn about our customers needs and to be able to adapt those needs in real time or ideally even predict those needs so that we can be ready when the customers need those capabilities. Sonny Hashmi We are seeing significant shifts in how our customers operate. As a result, often through the pandemic, it's become clear that ultimately the citizens now expect that government to work digitally so that they can engage with the government no matter where they are. In order for agency partners to deliver that digital experience. Obviously technology becomes a very central aspect of our agency. Sonny Hashmi Solutions are designed and how services are delivered, and it becomes an increasingly more important part of the overall workplace conversation. So in FAS, we are all about building an organization that anticipates these changing needs of our customers. So we're putting the building blocks in place now so we can be ready for these future needs five, ten or 15 years down the road. Sonny Hashmi But we also are enabling teams located nationally and globally to engage with these communities in person and will continue to do so to us is a very foundational moment in time where we have to rethink all of the are organizational structure, internal processes, our technology and product and systems. And of course you know how we're organized in physical space to continue to deliver more value for our customers and to create new opportunities for amazing companies that exist and are starting every day across the nation and overseas. Sonny Hashmi So it's an exciting moment for us to not only learn from the work that Nina mentioned in terms of the Workplace Innovation Lab for example, but also work with our customers to understand how we can support their mission as they change the mission parameters over time. Rob Trubia And again, just the workplace of the future, thinking about how we're working into the future is including more people, including more diversity, including more small businesses and including large businesses and everything in between. And really all over the world and all over the country. Of course, you know, as we go forward, I'm curious, Katy, how can GSA really leverage its expertise to help agency customers and industry partners to plan for the future and have solutions, you know, ready in advance? Katy Kale So I love to say that GSA is the backbone of the federal government. We are able to deliver what our our our sister agencies need to advance their mission. And we also deliver directly for the American people, which means that we're really uniquely situated to see challenges across the government and help address them at the right time. We also have the expertise and the experience to adapt to those solutions to meet the needs of our customers, whether that's using our buying power to get a more sustainable material into the marketplace and bolster our clean energy grid, or really identifying tech needs and working with industry to find state of the art solutions. Katy Kale And as we put ourselves into our customer's shoes and figure out what they need, we're able to share that information with others, and that helps us guide our conversations as well as our actions. And and since we're able to be so connected within, across and beyond government, are able to bring a host of best practices into government so that they can benefit everyone. Katy Kale And right now we are looking for talented people who can serve on Nina's team or Sonny's team or anywhere throughout GSA, people who can bring expertise in ensuring that federal buildings and purchases are aligned and create a really vibrant work environment. Because the people that we're hiring right now, the people that we're recruiting right now, we're going to retain them, we're going to train them, we're going to make sure that they are the leaders of this organization ten, 15 years from now, and that for this agency and government as a whole is what we need to be able to evolve and to make sure that we're really meeting the Katy Kale mission again, not just today, but in the in the years ahead. And so if you are listening and you're interested in joining GSA, please come to GSA.gov, Learn more about our organization and talk to us. We'd love to. We'd love to have you be part of our fabulous team. Rob Trubia Well, thank you. And I think it is a fabulous place to work now, and I think maybe even more so in the future. Nina, could you just share with us the website again and just just a little bit of a plug on the second floor, at 18F? Nina Albert There are we are really encouraging and urging employees and teams to come and visit the Workplace Innovation Lab. The way to reserve space at the Workplace Innovation Lab, which is located on the second floor of 1800 Street GSA's own headquarters, is to go to workplace.gsa.gov. You'll be met there by a concierge who can help you sign on to the network there and get full access to your networks at home. Nina Albert And then you can experiment and see what types of workplaces work best for you as an individual or you as a team. So yeah, please visit workplace.gsa.gov. Rob Trubia Yeah, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. Thank you. All of you. Katy, Sonny, Nina, thank you for your time. We really appreciate this has been fascinating. It's an amazing topic. It's a global topic and GSA really is leading the way and it's exciting. It's really fun. This has been a fun conversation. Thank you all very much. Rob Trubia That wraps up episode six of GSA Does That!? Thank you all so much for exploring with us the crucial role GSA is playing in shaping the federal workplace and how it's evolving to meet the needs of the future. I hope that through this episode you gained a deeper understanding of the workplace of the future and how GSA is leading the way. Rob Trubia And maybe like me, you had no idea that GSA does that. Hey, looking ahead to episode seven, have you ever wondered what it would be like to own your own lighthouse? Or maybe you're just drawn to the historic nature and beauty? Well, then be sure to listen to our conversation with GSA’s, John Kelly and the U.S. Coast Guard, or we'll enlighten you on just how the lighthouse program works and how you or your community preservation group might just find yourselves with the keys to America's next decommissioned lighthouse. Rob Trubia And remember to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And for more information, visit gsa.gov/podcast. Or to suggest a topic or guest, send us an email at gsadoesthat@gsa.gov. I'm your host Rob Trubia. Our executive producer is the one and only Max Stempora. GSA Does That!? is a production of the U.S. General Services Administration Office of Strategic Communication.