United States Government Publishing Office publisher pbl distributor dst United States Government Accountability Office Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division author aut Government Organization text government publication eng GAOREPORTS Legislative Agency Publications gao legislative 2010-08-12 U.S. Government Printing Office 2000-03-31 monographic deposited born digital 84 p. GA 1.13:RCED-00-70 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70 P0b002ee1803a1f1b f:rc00070 DGPO 2010-08-12 2011-03-28 GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70 machine generated eng fdlp REPORT GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70 RCED-00-70 National recreation areas National parks Hotels and motels Facility maintenance Facility security Concessions contracts Human resources training Maintenance standards Accountability Yellowstone National Park (WY) Death Valley National Park (CA) Grand Canyon National Park (AZ) NPS Concession Services Plan Mammoth Cave National Park (KY) Sequoia-Kings National Park (CA) Olympic National Park (WA) Yosemite National Park (CA) NPSC Concession Program Chapter Report RCED Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the National Parks Concession Program management problems, focusing on: (1) factors affecting the condition of lodging facilities in the national park system; and (2) options available to address these factors.<p/>GAO noted that: (1) after considering numerous site-specific factors that could potentially affect the condition of lodging facilities--such as whether the facilities were used year-round or just seasonally, whether the facilities were owned by the government or by the concessioner, whether the facilities were designated as historic structures, and others--GAO found that the most significant factors are those involving the agency's overall approach to managing the program; (2) specifically, the management problems center on three areas: (a) inadequate qualifications and training of the agency's concessions specialists and concession contracting staff; (b) the agency's out-of-date practices in handling its contracting workload and chronic backlog of expired contracts; and (c) a lack of accountability within the concessions program; (3) 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 National Park Service concessions staff; (4) because of these problems, the Park Service frequently has difficulty managing the performance of its concessioners to ensure a consistent level of quality in the services and facilities they provide; (5) the Park Service has two principal options for dealing with the problems identified in its management of the concessions program: (a) using better hiring and training practices to professionalize its workforce and thus obtain better business and contracting expertise; or (b) contracting out to acquire the needed business and contracting expertise; (6) these two options are not mutually exclusive in that the agency could contract for expertise in certain functions while developing expertise in-house for other functions; (7) both options require that the agency better manage its human capital to ensure that it selects, trains, develops, and manages concessions staff who have the skills needed to bring about improvement in the concessions program; (8) regardless of what options--or combination of options--it selects, the agency needs to strengthen its accountability for control of the program; and (9) unless this is done, the effectiveness of other changes to the program will likely be diminished. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70/html/GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70/pdf/GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70.pdf GAO/RCED-00-70 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GAOREPORTS-RCED-00-70 Chapter Report GAO/RCED-00-70; Park Service: Need to Address Management Problems That; National recreation areas National parks Hotels and motels Facility maintenance Facility security Concessions contracts Human resources training Maintenance standards Accountability Yellowstone National Park (WY) Death Valley National Park (CA) Grand Canyon National Park (AZ) NPS Concession Services Plan Mammoth Cave National Park (KY) Sequoia-Kings National Park (CA) Olympic National Park (WA) Yosemite National Park (CA) NPSC Concession Program