National Park Service: Status of Efforts to Develop Better Deferred Maintenance Data

Beginning in the 1980s, the National Park Service spent $11 million to develop and implement a maintenance management system. The system was eventually terminated because it failed to provide park managers with all the information they needed to manage their deferred maintenance workload. In 1998, the Park Service started a new asset management process to provide a systematic method for documenting deferred maintenance needs and tracking progress in reducing the amount of deferred maintenance. GAO found that the Park Service has made progress in developing a new asset management process. When finally implemented, the process should provide the agency with a (1) reliable inventory of its assets; (2) process for reporting on the condition of each asset; and (3) systemwide methodology for estimating deferred maintenance costs for each asset. Although 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.