Park Service

GAO discusses the management of the Park Service's concessions program. GAO's comments are based primarily on two reports--one reviewed the condition of lodging facilities in 10 national parks and the other addressed key management problems in the concessions program and the options available to address them. GAO found shortcomings in the agency's overall approach to managing the concessions program that center on three areas: (1) the inadequate qualifications and training of the agency's concessions specialists and concessions contracting staff, (2) the agency's out-of-date practices in handling its contracts workload as well as its chronic backlog of expired contracts, and (3) a lack of accountability within the concessions program.

GAO noted that: (1) shortcomings in the agency's overall approach to managing the concessions program center on three areas: (a) the inadequate qualifications and training of the agency's concessions specialists and concessions contracting staff; (b) the agency's out-of-date practices in handling its contracting workload as well as its chronic backlog of expired contracts; and (c) a lack of accountability within the concessions program; (2) for the most part, these problems are long-standing and are consistent with similar concerns raised by the Department of the Interior, its Office of the Inspector General, and NPS concessions staff; (3) NPS has two principal options available for dealing with the problems identified in the management of the concessions program: (a) using better hiring and training practices to professionalize the workforce and thus obtain better business and contracting expertise; or (b) contracting for the needed business and contracting expertise; (4) these two options are not mutually exclusive in that the agency could contract for expertise in certain functions while developing the expertise in-house for other functions; (5) no matter which option--or combination of options--it selects, the agency needs to strengthen its accountability for and control of the program; and (6) unless this is done, the effectiveness of other changes to the program will likely be diminished.