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Informing the legislative debate since 1914
October 7, 2024
Recreation.gov: Overview and Issues for Congress
For many people looking to experience the country's
federal lands and waters, their trip begins with a visit to
Recreation.gov. Recreation.gov is a cloud-based website
that offers federal recreation information, trip planning
services, and reservation booking to the public for roughly
4,000 federal recreation areas and more than 120,000
campsites located at national parks, forests, wildlife
refuges, waterways, and other locations. Booz Allen
Hamilton Inc. (BAH), the current contractor, operates the
website and reservation system on behalf of participating
federal agencies. The U.S. Forest Service (FS) administers
the contract for Recreation.gov.
Background and Hstory
Public reservation systems for federal lands and waters
have been in place since at least the early 1970s as a means
to manage visitation and facilitate use of these resources.
Until the 1990s, federal agencies offering reservation
services generally did so independently, with little
coordination. In 1995, FS and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers (USACE) led the first interagency reservation
initiative, known as the National Recreation Reservation
Service (NRRS). In 1997, Park.net Inc. (later renamed
ReserveAmerica Inc.) was awarded the contract to develop
and operate the NRRS. In 1999, Park.net launched
ReserveUSA.com-the first website offering online
reservations and ticket sales for federal lands and waters.
Further efforts to consolidate and streamline federal
recreation data and user experience occurred under the
George W. Bush Administration. In 2002, the Recreation
One Stop (RiS) program was established as part of the
President's E-Government initiative. RIS refers to a
multipronged, interagency program that oversees federal
recreation reservation and trip planning services. It includes
online booking services (i.e., Recreation.gov),
administration of a joint federal recreation database (known
as the Recreation Information Database [RIDB]), and a
Technology Innovation Fund to allow for responsiveness to
rapidly evolving technologies. As part of the RiS program,
additional federal agencies joined the FS and USACE
contract and consolidated their reservation and booking
systems into one centralized online system. By 2007, this
booking system had been rebranded as Recreation.gov.
Current Structure and Adrnnistration
In 2016, FS awarded a multiyear contract for management
of Recreation.gov to BAH, following a competitive
selection process. Pursuant to the contract, BAH is
responsible for hosting, operating, and maintaining the
Recreation.gov system. This includes the aggregation,
storage, and maintenance of transaction data, as well as
customer and technical support responsibilities. The federal
government owns and is responsible for providing
recreation data from the RIDB, including facility types,
mapping coordinates, and maximum occupancy details. The
RIDB contains data from 14 participating government
agencies (see Table 1)
Table I. Recreation.gov Participating Agencies
Agencies Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of
Offering Reclamation, National Archives and
Reservations Records Administration, National Park
Service, Naval District Washington,
Presidio Trust, U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
U.S. Forest Service
Agencies Bureau of Engraving and Printing,
Sharing Data Federal Highway Administration,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, Smithsonian Institution,
Tennessee Valley Authority
Source: CRS, Recreation.gov, About Us,
https://www.recreation.gov/about-us, October 7, 2024.
Pursuant to a 2018 memorandum of understanding, the
participating agencies fund the operational costs associated
with the RiS program. Each participating agency covers
agency-specific operational support costs. Joint costs
associated with program staff salaries, supplies, travel
expenses, and preparation of contracts and agreements are
determined by an annual budget review and are split
equally between FS, the National Park Service (NPS), and
USACE, the three agencies with the largest shares of
facilities and services managed through Recreation.gov.
Revenues from Recreation.gov flow to the contractor
(BAH), the participating federal agencies, and others. The
Recreation.gov contract specifies that BAH is paid
primarily through fees collected from reservations booked
on the platform. Revenues are deposited into a U.S.
Treasury account managed by FS through the RIS finance
operations center. Disbursements are made on a monthly
basis to participating agencies, concessioners, and BAH.
Agencies may elect to have funds withheld from their
monthly distributions to cover certain operational costs
associated with the RIS program. Alternatively, agencies
may transfer funds to FS to cover costs.
Usage and Revenue
Users have increasingly turned to Recreation.gov to plan
trips at federal recreation sites. Based on available data,
roughly 9 million reservations were processed through
Recreation.gov in FY2023, up from 3.5 million in FY2019
and 2.6 million in FY2013 (see Figure 2). According to
BAH, from October 1, 2018, to December 31, 2023,
Recreation.gov received more than 1.2 billion site visits.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/goveqwu0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)