Testimony 

Before the Subcommittee on National 

Parks, Recreation and Public Lands, 

Committee on Resources, House of 

Representatives

United States General Accounting Office 

GAO

For Release on Delivery 

Expected at 10:00 a.m. PDT 

Saturday, September 27, 2003 NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Efforts Underway to 

Address Its Maintenance 

Backlog 

Statement of Barry T. Hill, Director 

Natural Resources and Environment 

GAO-03-1177T 
In 2002, GAO reported that the design of the National Park Service’s new asset 

management process was complete but implementation was just beginning. The 

new process will address deferred maintenance, commonly referred to as the 

maintenance backlog, as part of a much broader approach to its asset 

management. When fully developed and implemented, the new process will, for 

the first time, enable the agency to have a (1) reliable inventory of its assets; (2) 

process for reporting on the condition of the assets in its inventory; and (3) 

consistent, systemwide methodology for estimating the deferred maintenance 

costs for its assets. As a result, agency managers and the Congress should 

receive much more accurate and reliable information on the amount of deferred 

maintenance needs throughout the national park system. Nonetheless, while the 

Park Service’s current efforts are promising, GAO reported on a few areas that 

the agency needed to address to improve the performance of the process. These 

included the need to (1) develop costs and schedules for completing the 

implementation of the process, (2) better coordinate the tracking of the process 

among Park Service headquarters units to avoid duplication of effort within the 

agency; and, (3) better define its approach to determine the condition of its 

assets, and how much the assessments will cost. 

Since that report, the agency appears to have made progress. While the 

complete implementation of the process will not occur until fiscal year 2006, the 

agency has completed, or is nearing completion of, a number of substantial and 

important steps. According to the Park Service, the agency has completed its 

asset inventory and trained staff on the use of the required computer software. 

In addition, the Park Service provided information indicating that it was 

addressing each of the concerns identified in GAO’s 2002 report. Specifically, 

the Park Service (1) developed cost and schedule estimates for the complete 

implementation of the process, (2) developed a plan with an implementation 

schedule to eliminate any duplication or inconsistencies between organizational 

components, and (3) completed annual condition assessments—visual 

inspections—on all but nine of the larger parks in the system for which it only 

plans to perform a more comprehensive condition assessment. According to the 

Park Service, the work done so far are necessary steps and reflect some of the 

best practices of the private sector in developing and implementing an effective 

facility management process.

GAO, the Department of the 

Interior, and others have reported 

on the National Park Service’s 

efforts to develop an effective 

maintenance management process 

that would, among other things, 

enable the agency to accurately 

and reliably estimate the amount of 

deferred maintenance on its assets. 

Over the years, the agency’s 

estimates of the cost of its deferred 

maintenance have varied widely—

sometimes by billions of dollars. 

Currently, the agency estimates 

that its deferred maintenance 

backlog will cost over $5 billion. In 

April 2002, GAO reported on the 

status of efforts to develop better 

deferred maintenance data. 

(National Park Service: Status of 

Efforts to Develop Better Deferred 

Maintenance Data,GAO-02-568R 

[Washington, D.C.: Apr. 12, 2002]) 

This testimony presents the results 

of GAO’s April report and updates 

the progress the Park Service is 

making in implementing its new 

asset management process. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-1177T.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Barry T. Hill at 

(202) 512-3841 or hillbt@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-03-1177T, a testimony 

to the Subcommittee on National Parks, 

Recreation and Public Lands, Committee 

on Resources, House of Representatives 

September 27, 2003

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 

Efforts Underway to Address Its 

Maintenance Backlog 
Page 1 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to be here today to discuss the National Park Service’s 

maintenance backlog. GAO, the Department of the Interior, and others 

have reported on the Park Service’s efforts to develop an effective 

maintenance management process that would, among other things, enable 

the agency to provide accurate and reliable estimates of the amount of 

deferred maintenance on its assets. Over the years, the agency’s estimates 

of the amount of its deferred maintenance backlog have varied widely—

sometimes by billions of dollars. Currently, the agency estimates its 

deferred maintenance backlog at over $5 billion. Although the Park 

Service has spent almost two decades addressing its maintenance backlog, 

it acknowledges that it still does not have the data it needs to properly 

manage the broad array of historic, cultural, and natural assets placed in 

its care—including accurate and reliable data on its deferred maintenance 

needs.1

 In 1998, spurred by continuing congressional concerns and new 

federal accounting standards,2

 the Park Service initiated the design of a 

new asset management process that is intended to provide the agency with 

a better overall approach to managing its asset inventory. A major goal of 

this new process is to provide the Park Service with a reliable and 

systematic method for estimating and documenting its deferred 

maintenance needs and tracking progress in reducing the amount of 

deferred maintenance. 

My testimony today will (1) summarize our prior work regarding the 

potential of the Park Service’s new asset management process to provide 

maintenance data that will permit agency managers and the Congress to 

monitor progress in reducing deferred maintenance and (2) update the 

progress the Park Service is making in implementing its new asset 

management process and realizing its potential for improved management. 

 1

This maintenance includes resources and activities needed to maintain facilities and the 

infrastructure in the system, such as buildings, trails, botanical gardens, bridges, and other 

structures. It does not include maintenance or restoration of natural landscapes, such as 

removing non-native plant species from a meadow. 

2

The Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards No. 6, Accounting for Plant, 

Property, and Equipment, issued by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board in 

1996, requires that deferred maintenance be disclosed in federal agencies’ annual financial 

statements beginning in fiscal year 1998. 
Page 2 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

For the most part, my testimony is based on a report we issued last year.3

At that time, the design of the new process was complete but 

implementation was just beginning. In preparing for today’s hearing, we 

obtained updated information from the Park Service. However, we did not 

have the opportunity to independently verify the information the Park 

Service provided. To do so would have required work at regional offices 

and parks. We conducted our work in accordance with generally accepted 

government auditing standards. 

As we previously reported, the Park Service’s new asset management 

process is designed to address deferred maintenance, commonly referred 

to as the maintenance backlog, as part of a much broader approach to 

asset management. When fully and properly implemented, the new 

process is expected, for the first time, to enable the agency to have a (1) 

reliable inventory of its assets; (2) process for reporting on the condition 

of each asset in its inventory; and (3) consistent, systemwide methodology 

for estimating the deferred maintenance costs for each asset. As a result, 

agency managers and the Congress should receive much more accurate 

and reliable information on the extent of deferred maintenance needs 

throughout the national park system. Nonetheless, while the Park 

Service’s current efforts are promising, we reported on a few areas that 

the agency needed to address to improve the performance of the process. 

These included the need to (1) develop costs and schedules for completing 

the implementation of the process so that the agency’s performance could 

be monitored and assessed, (2) better coordinate the tracking of the 

process among Park Service headquarters units to avoid duplication of 

effort within the agency, and (3) better define its approach to assessing the 

condition of its assets, and determining how much the assessments will 

cost. 

Since our report last year, I am pleased to say that the agency appears to 

have made progress. While complete implementation of the process will 

not occur until fiscal year 2006, the agency has completed, or nearly 

completed, several substantial and important steps. According to the Park 

Service, it has completed its asset inventory, trained staff on the use of the 

required computer software, and completed most of the on-site 

inspections necessary to determine the condition and maintenance needs 

 3

U.S. General Accounting Office, National Park Service: Status of Efforts to Develop Better 

Deferred Maintenance Data, GAO-02-568R (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 12, 2002). 

Results in Brief 
Page 3 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

of inventoried assets. In addition, the Park Service provided information 

indicating that it was addressing each of the concerns identified in our 

prior report. 

The national park system contains 388 park units. These park units have a 

diverse inventory of facilities and other assets, including over 18,000 

permanent structures, 8,000 miles of roads, 1,800 bridges and tunnels, 

4,400 housing units, about 700 water and wastewater systems, over 400 

dams, and 200 solid waste operations. The Park Service values these 

assets at over $35 billion. Needless to say, the proper care and 

maintenance of the national parks and their supporting infrastructure is 

essential to the continued use and enjoyment of our national treasures by 

this and future generations. However, for years Park Service officials have 

highlighted the agency’s inability to keep up with its maintenance needs. 

In this connection, Park Service officials and others have often cited a 

continuing buildup of unmet maintenance needs as evidence of 

deteriorating conditions throughout the national park system. The 

accumulation of these unmet needs is commonly referred to as its 

“maintenance backlog.” Although the Park Service has spent almost two 

decades and about $11 million addressing this problem, it still does not 

have a reliable estimate of deferred maintenance needs for its facilities 

and other assets. 

In the past several years, concerns about the cost of operating and 

maintaining federal recreation sites within the National Park Service, as 

well as other federal land management agencies, led the Congress to 

provide a significant new source of funds. This additional source of 

funding—the Recreational Fee Demonstration Program4

—was, in part, 

aimed at helping the agencies address their backlogged repair and 

maintenance problems. This new funding source is in addition to annual 

appropriations the Park Service receives each year for maintenance 

activities.5

 4

Since fiscal year 1996, the Park Service, as well as three other federal land management 

agencies, have been authorized to have a fee demonstration program. Under this temporary 

program, the agencies are permitted to experiment with increased and/or new recreation 

fees. The revenue generated from this program remains available for agency use to address 

a variety of needs, including maintenance,without further appropriation. 

5

The House Committee on Appropriations has stressed that recreation fees should never be 

used to replace appropriated funds; the fees should be used for direct improvements on 

site that enhance the recreation experience. H.R. Rep. No. 106-646 (2000). 

Background 
Page 4 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

Despite the years of attention and funding and the well-intended efforts of 

the agency and the Congress to resolve the maintenance backlog dilemma, 

it has not gone away. While Congress continues to provide hundreds of 

millions of dollars annually to deal with the maintenance backlog at the 

national parks, the Park Service still has no reliable data on the size of the 

problem, raising questions about what has been accomplished with the 

provided funds. 

As we reported in April 2002, the Park Service has made progress in 

developing a new asset management process that, when fully and properly 

implemented, should provide the agency with more accurate and reliable 

estimates of the amount of deferred maintenance of its assets. As 

currently planned, the new process will, for the first time, enable the 

agency to have a (1) reliable inventory of its assets; (2) process for 

reporting on the condition of assets in its inventory; and (3) systemwide 

methodology for estimating deferred maintenance costs for assets. 

The new asset management process is composed of both systemwide, 

integrated software to track cost and maintenance data and regular 

condition assessments of Park Service assets. The cornerstone of the new 

asset management process is the Facility Management Software System. 

This cradle-to-grave asset and work management process will allow park, 

regional office, or Park Service headquarters managers to track when, 

what, and how much maintenance and related costs has been directed at 

each specific asset. 

In addition to using the software system, the Park Service plans to assess 

the condition of its assets. These assessments will be inspections to 

document the condition of an asset as measured against applicable 

maintenance or condition standards. There are two types of condition 

assessments—annual and comprehensive. Annual assessments are 

essentially “eyeball inspections” of facilities to identify obvious and 

apparent deficiencies. Comprehensive assessments are more in-depth 

inspections to identify less obvious deficiencies, such as foundation or 

structural problems. While the eye-ball assessments are annual, the 

comprehensive assessments, which are much more expensive and timeconsuming, occur in 5-year cycles. The Park Service is to use the 

information obtained from these condition assessments to establish the 

overall condition of a facility or asset, including the resources needed to 

address its deferred maintenance needs and future facility needs. The cost 

of identified deferred maintenance needs will be estimated using another 

computer software system that will provide a uniform method for 

When Fully and 

Properly 

Implemented, the 

Park Service’s New 

Asset Management 

Process Should 

Provide Accurate and 

Reliable Deferred 

Maintenance Data 
Page 5 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

estimating repair and maintenance costs for each asset in the inventory. 

Agency managers will use the condition assessment information in 

combination with an asset priority ranking system to set priorities for 

deferred maintenance projects. 

While the design of the new process is complete, we reported in April 2002 

that the Park Service had just begun implementing it. For example, at that 

time, the agency was still inventorying its assets and training staff on how 

to use the new process at about a third of the park units in the national 

park system. We reported that because managers at each park will be 

required to implement this new process using a uniform systemwide 

methodology, the resulting deferred maintenance estimates should permit 

agency managers, as well as the Congress, to monitor progress in reducing 

deferred maintenance both at the individual park and systemwide levels. 

However, we noted that while the new process is promising, its success 

cannot be determined until staff in each of the park units are trained and 

the new asset management process is fully and properly implemented. 

In our last report, we also raised three concerns about the Park Service’s 

implementation of the new asset management process. While these 

matters were not significant enough to undermine the overall merit of the 

new process, we believed that addressing them would improve the 

effectiveness of the process. First, even though the Park Service had been 

developing its new process for more than 3 years, it had not yet estimated 

its total implementation costs or developed a schedule for completing 

implementation. While the agency had made progress in developing 

schedules and costs for some components of the process, it had not yet 

estimated when it will complete all the required condition assessments or 

what they will cost. We noted that monitoring and assessing performance 

against budgets and time frames would be difficult without complete 

estimates and schedules that include all components of the process, 

including the completion of condition assessments. 

Second, two different operating divisions within the Park Service—

Concessions Management and Facilities Management—were developing 

separate processes for tracking and reporting deferred maintenance, even 

though both units are responsible for managing the condition of 

government-owned facilities. Because both of these units have similar 

responsibilities, it seemed reasonable that they would work together in a 

coordinated way to ensure that their efforts are not duplicative. 

Finally, the Park Service reported that about one-third of the park units 

were to complete annual condition assessments by the end of fiscal year 
Page 6 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

2002. We noted that this approach may be appropriate for meeting 

programmatic and financial reporting needs in the short term; however, 

without comprehensive assessments, this approach might result in 

overlooking more complex and costly problems in the long term. As a 

result, this approach could understate the extent of the deferred 

maintenance problem. Park Service officials told us that the agency 

eventually planned to conduct comprehensive assessments for all assets. 

However, at the time they had not developed a plan detailing where, when, 

and how the assessments will be done or what they will cost. 

Although full implementation of the new asset management process is still 

years from completion, the Park Service appears to have made progress 

since our last report. Also, importantly, Park Service management has 

demonstrated its commitment to implementing this process by 

withholding some fiscal year 2003 funding from parks that are not 

complying with the agency’s implementation goals. 

The agency now reports that it has completed its inventory of assets for all 

park units as well as the first round of staff training on the use of the 

facilities management software. The agency also contracted with a 

consulting firm to evaluate its training and implementation efforts to help 

ensure that the training is effective and that the software system is being 

consistently applied throughout the park system. The Park Service has 

analyzed the firm’s results and is now developing a training curriculum to 

address the firm’s recommendations. The Park Service expects to begin 

implementing the training in January or February 2004. 

The agency is also addressing each of the issues raised in our last report. 

Specifically, the Park Service has now developed cost and schedule 

estimates for the complete implementation of the process. According to 

the schedule, the process is to be fully implemented by the end of fiscal 

year 2006, when all the comprehensive condition assessments are 

complete for all park units and deferred maintenance and other needs can 

be estimated on a reliable and consistent basis for assets throughout the 

national park system. The Park Service estimates now that the cost of the 

complete rollout and implementation, including performing condition 

assessments, will be about $91 million from fiscal years 1999 through 2006. 

Thereafter, it estimates that the annual costs of sustaining the process 

once it is fully operational will be about $20 million. 

In response to our concern that two different operating divisions within 

the agency—Concessions Management and Facilities Management—were 

The Park Service Has 

Made Progress 

Implementing Its 

Asset Management 

Process Since Our 

Last Report 
Page 7 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

developing separate processes for maintaining government-owned 

facilities, the Park Service told us that they agreed and are committed to 

implementing a single facilities management process. According to the 

agency, it has developed a plan with an implementation schedule to 

eliminate any duplication or inconsistencies between these two 

components of the organization. 

The Park Service has also made progress in performing its servicewide 

facility condition assessments. According to the Park Service, it has 

completed annual condition assessments—visual inspections—on all but 

nine of the larger parks in the system.6

 In addition, the Park Service is 

concurrently performing the more detailed, comprehensive condition 

assessments on other park units. According to the Park Service, the work 

done so far are necessary steps and reflect some of the best practices of 

the private sector in developing and implementing an effective facility 

management process. 

The Park Service has a solemn responsibility to take care of the nation’s 

natural, cultural and historic treasures. While it has unfortunately taken 

decades to achieve the current level of focus on maintaining these 

treasures, the Park Service apparently now has made substantive progress 

in developing and implementing a system it can use to determine the 

conditions of the assets in its portfolio and develop accurate and reliable 

estimates of its deferred maintenance needs. However, the agency has not 

yet completed the task. Determining the assets’ conditions and their 

maintenance costs will require years of sustained commitment by the 

agency and by the Congress to ensure that the full benefits of the agency’s 

new facility management process are realized. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be happy to 

respond to any questions that you or Members of the Subcommittee may 

have. 

 6

In order to expedite the condition assessments, the Park Service decided to only complete 

the more comprehensive condition assessments on the nine larger parks. These parks 

include Appalachian Trail, Delaware Water Gap, Gateway, Golden Gate, Grand Canyon, 

Great Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. By the end of fiscal 

year 2003, the Park Service will have completed these assessments for five of the nine 

parks with the remaining four to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2004. 

Conclusion 
Page 8 Park Service Maintenance GAO-03-1177T 

For further information about this testimony, please contact me at (202) 

512- 3841. Cliff Fowler, Roy Judy, and Patrick Sigl made key contributions 

to this statement. 

GAO Contacts and 

Staff 

Acknowledgments 

(360408)