A handful of federal workers are reportedly in the process of being moved from their established home in Reston to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s headquarters in D.C.
The relocation of the Interior Department’s Business Integration Office (BIO) from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) campus will affect only 17 employees, but Reps. Suhas Subramanyam and James Walkinshaw, who represent Virginia’s 10th and 11th Congressional Districts, argue that it will seriously undercut the agency’s effectiveness.
They also fear the move is setting the stage for the USGS to vacate its longtime headquarters at the John W. Powell Building in Reston (12201 Sunrise Valley Drive), which is being considered for potential disposal by the federal government.
“Relocating BIO staff will significantly undermine the agency’s ability to serve the American people,” the congressmen said in a statement last Friday (Aug. 7). “Staff will no longer be able to seamlessly collaborate with their partner contractors in Reston, and many federal employees will likely choose to resign rather than navigate a more costly and time-consuming commute and degraded working conditions. This plan is bad for our region and bad for our country.”
The Interior Department notified BIO workers in July that they would soon be required to move to its main D.C. office, known as the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building, at 1849 C Street NW in Foggy Bottom.
According to Subramanyam’s office, movers were spotted on the USGS campus in Reston on Friday and today (Tuesday), and BIO employees are expected to start reporting to the Udall building next Monday, Aug. 17.
First funded in 2004, the BIO manages the Interior Department’s Financial and Business Management System software that supports its budgeting, acquisition, property management and grant-issuing processes.
That work requires staff to work closely with government contractors, many of whom are located near their existing Reston offices, Subramanyam and Walkinshaw noted in an Aug. 5 letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
BIO workers were reportedly told that they must relocate to D.C. to increase usage of the Udall building. However, the congressmen questioned whether the “minimal” improvement that moving 17 employees will have on the D.C. office’s utilization justifies “the disruptions that will come with uprooting an entire office.”
“As Members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, we have a duty to ensure that federal agency relocations are beneficial to the agency’s productivity and a responsible use of taxpayer dollars,” they said, noting that the Interior Department has already shed a third of its staff since President Donald Trump took office for a second term in January 2025.
Walkinshaw and Subramanyam called on Burgum to provide more information by Aug. 21 about the planned BIO relocation, whether department leaders made any efforts to address employee concerns, the move’s potential impact on the office’s ability to fulfill its duties, and any future plans to relocate other workers.
The Interior Department didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment from FFXnow.
After decades of sharing space with other agencies around D.C., the U.S. Geological Survey finally secured its own dedicated facility with the opening of the Powell building in 1974. The 105-acre campus features distinctive architecture and wooded landscapes that earned it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.
While the building’s occupancy has declined in recent years from over 2,000 employees as recently as 2011, it’s still home to approximately 600 USGS workers as well as other operations, such as the BIO, according to Walkinshaw and Subramanyam.
The Powell building is among more than 400 properties owned by the federal government that have been deemed underutilized and are now being considered for disposal by the Public Buildings Reform Board, an independent advisory board created by Congress in 2016 to help reduce maintenance and renovation costs.
Other targeted sites include part of a warehouse complex at 7000 Loisdale Road in Franconia that was being vacated, as of June.
The Department of the Interior and General Services Administration, which manages most federal properties, haven’t commented on their plans for the USGS headquarters in Reston, but following a public meeting of the Public Buildings Reform Board on June 25, its executive director, Paul Walden, told FFXnow that discussions about how much of the campus might be offloaded were still underway.
Walkinshaw and Subramanyam said they had asked Burgum on June 2 about any plans to relocate the hundreds of USGS employees currently based in Reston to D.C. but never received a response.
