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GAO-02-568R 1 (2002-04-12)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaalyj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: i Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 April 12, 2002 The Honorable Joe Skeen Chairman, The Honorable Norman D. Dicks Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies Committee on Appropriations House of Representatives Subject: National Park Service: Status of Efforts to Develop Better Deferred Maintenance Data As GAO, the Department of the Interior's inspector general, and others reported,' the National Park Service has struggled to develop an effective maintenance management system that would, among other things, enable the agency to provide an accurate and reliable estimate of the amount of deferred maintenance on its assets. Although the Park Service has spent almost two decades addressing this problem, Park Service officials acknowledge that the service still does not have an accurate inventory of existing assets or a reliable estimate of deferred maintenance costs for these assets. Over the years, estimates of the amount of deferred maintenance throughout the national park system have varied widely-sometimes by billions of dollars. In 1984, the Congress directed the National Park Service to develop and implement a maintenance management system. The agency spent about $11 million developing the system. However, park managers found that it did not provide them with all of the information needed to manage their deferred maintenance workload. As a result, the use of the system was terminated. In 1998, spurred by continuing congressional concern and new federal accounting standards,2 the Park Service initiated the design of a new asset management process that, among other things, is to provide the agency with a systematic method for documenting deferred maintenance needs and tracking progress in reducing the amount of deferred maintenance. The Park Service 'U.S. General Accounting Office, National Park Service: Efforts to Identify and Manage the Maintenance Backlog, GAO/RCED-98-143 (Washington, D.C.: May 14, 1998). U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, Followup of Maintenance Activities, National Park Service, 98-I- 344 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 1998). U.S. Department of the Interior, Interior Planning, Design and Construction Council, Facilities Maintenance Assessment and Recommendations (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 1998). 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 with fiscal year 1998. GAO-02-568R National Park Service

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