National Park Budget
National Park Service to Test a “Park Scorecard”
By Tad Sooter, 5-05-06
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The National Park Service will test a complex new system for comparing and evaluating parks this year, with the hopes of using it to help determine the 2008 fiscal-year budget. The “park scorecard” will use 33 efficiency and performance metrics to rank parks into four efficiency categories, according to a Park Service memo released by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility or PEER.
The Park Service says the new system will give superintendents the data and tools they need to justify budgets and will add transparency to management decisions. In a press release earlier this week, PEER berated the scorecard system as overly complicated “bureaucratic pretzel making” and the product of poor leadership in the Park Service.
The scorecard is one of many tools being developed to make the park service better at business management and could play a role in determining how to meet President Bush's request for $100 million to be shaved off the Park Service budget. National Park Service spokeswoman Elaine Sevy said the scorecard allows park managers to prove their efficiency on paper and better ask for additional funding where it is needed.
“We’ve long been conservationists, and were still committed to that goal. But we still have a long way to go in financial management,” Sevy said.
According to the memo, "Raw scores are Adjusted by independent variables that consider “uniqueness” factors such as acres, new parks, population density, emphasis, climate, and FTE, among others." Parks with low performance scores could be allocated more resources and high scoring parks could be rewarded.
Sevy said the scorecard is complicated because it is performing the complex but necessary task of evaluating and comparing the nation’s more than 300 National Parks.
“It was created by budget officers who worked closely with park employees to make it as user friendly as possible. There is not a simple process for a complex task,” Sevy said, stressing that the scorecard is a prototype and will continue to evolve.
Little information about the scorecard has been made available, but the Park Service will release a new version of the scorecard soon, according to an article in the Government Executive, a business news source for federal mangers and executives. The story quoted several Park Service employees about how the scorecard will be useful, but sourced the memo released by PEER for most of the specifics on the program.
PEER director Jeff Ruch said his organization decided to publicize the scorecard system because it seemed like a strange way for the Park Service to do business.
“We’re calling this the Park Service’s revenge of the nerds because it’s a one-size-fits-all approach to getting a handle on their budget,” Ruch said. “Parts of the scorecard just sound loopy, like putting numbers on geographic features, or putting a number on the climate.”
Ruch said the scorecard and core operations analysis, a budgeting tool used by 53 National Parks including Glacier, are programs the Park Service can default to, to avoid tough leadership decisions.
“Leadership of the Park Service is weak, no one would call the last few years the golden years of the Park Service,” Ruch said.
Sevy said that while the park service is going through tough budget times, the commitment of the employees has not changed.
“Park Service people tend to drip green blood and most have been here for years and they are very committed. They’re not just going to switch over to mathematical system for management,” Sevy said.
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Comments
Certainly some type of standardized means of determining how various parks use their money would be helpful.
(PEER staff can be grumpy, indeed testy about Bush assaults on the environment and the federal agencies tasked to look after federal lands and wildlife. Marion may be confusing PEER with the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, of whom you've never met a livelier, and less coot-like bunch.)
Certainly, there's room for improvement in ANY federal or state agency, but the NPS is something of an elite group, relatively untainted by the political pressures that afflict the Forest Service (timber companies), the Bureau of Land Management (ranchers) and US Fish & Wildlife (the rest of the world).
The NPS doesn't have to mess with grazing allotments, timber sales, energy companies, miners, real estate developers and the politicians who run at their beck and call.
That isn't to say that the NPS hasn't done some singularly dumb things -- shutting down all the Yellowstone dumps all at once, or firing their top anti-poaching cop, Bob Jackson, come to mind.
NPS leadership, under this administration, has worked hard to push world-class parks like Yellowstone down that slippery slope of highly commercialized recreation, putting preservation of our national treasures farther back in line compared to making a buck.
And how does one standardize evaluations of budgets for the Grand Canyon, versus the Statue of Liberty? Not, I suspect, via a matrix with 33 categories.
All this from the same administration that brought us the FEMA response to Katrina, 64 convoluted choices in the Medicare prescription plan, the biggest deficit in the nation's history AND no bin Laden?
"Efficient" is an all-too rare attribute for a bunch that was hyped as putting the adults in charge.
How about flooding the meadows at Old Faithful with overflowing sewers, and shutting down Norris campground?
I don't know how often you go to Yellowstone, but I go several times a year since I retired and I can tell you that a lot of repairs have been done by this administration. Probably more than any previous administration, including fixing the sewer system, putting in a new water system, well they are in the process of the last.
It really doesn't matter how many improvements there are, these folks are still in a snit because we elected George Bush president, not once, but twice.
Bison and snowmobiles are more complex. Some bison seem fairly tolerant, but then there are foolish snowmobile riders who think it fun to tease, harass and herd bison.
Overflowing sewers are symptomatic of long deferred maintenance that goes back decades and both GOP and Dem administrations. Hadn't heard of Norris campground shutdown, but was aware that trails were closed recently when new geothermals got the ground too hot. Yes, there have been good repairs under this administration, but the new Historical Archive building has limited hours due to tight budgets and the new Old Faithful Visitor Center won't have additional staff when it opens.
Since people do have their individual filters and biases, Marion may be looking at the glass half full, while I view it as half empty.
We didn't need new visitor centers except for more room for the Yellowstone Association stores. Visitation reached a high, I believe in 1992, and has not returned to that high even with the wolf watchers, so why now? Why does it take more people to pass out information in a new building than an older one? Yellowstone is too commercialized as it is, and by those who are supposed to keep it from being commercialized.
I am old enough to realize nothing is perfect and everything has a cost. Unfortunately too many are looking for an ideal dream world with only the folks they like doing the things they find acceptable, and all paid for by the government.
The more people there are in the world, the more we need to learn to share and do with less.