Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the potential for increased efficiency and effectiveness in maintaining the national park system.
The National Park Service (NPS) spends millions of dollars annually to maintain the buildings, roads, bridges, monuments, hiking trails, and utility systems on the more than 79 million acres of developed and undeveloped land which comprise the national park system. GAO visited nine NPS units in 1983 and found that attention had not always been given to systematically maintaining facilities, and that NPS had not provided adequate maintenance policy, guidance, or training. At seven of the parks visited, GAO found that park superintendents were not determining or requesting the funding needed to properly maintain park assets, properly accounting for maintenance resources, or assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of their maintenance activities. Superintendents at these seven parks agreed that they did not have the necessary information about their maintenance operations and did not know whether their maintenance activities were effective or efficient. NPS has estimated that the cost of developing and implementing an effective maintenance management system would be less than $10 million. GAO believes that the cost of such a system could be justified by the large annual NPS maintenance budget, the current maintenance problems, and the potential to recapture development and implementation costs through reduced maintenance costs, increased productivity, and other benefits.
