Employee satisfaction rankings for National Park Service are not high in praise.
Poor teamwork. Miserable balance of work and your life. Little success with strategic management. Doesn't sound like the best place to work, does it?
But those are some of the findings of life within the ranks of the National Park Service, according to this year's Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.
The rankings are compiled by the Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation through surveys of more than 263,000 government workers.
Agencies and subcomponents are ranked according to a Best Places to Work index score, which measures overall employee satisfaction, an important part of employee engagement and, ultimately, a driver of organizational performance. The Best Places to Work score is calculated both for the organization as a whole and also for specific demographic groups.
While this year's rankings show a slight improvement for the Park Service over recent years' surveys, they also reflect that the agency is far from being considered a good employer.
Overall, the Park Service ranked 139th out of 224 agencies. Its combined score of 63.7, compiled from surveys that looked at such things as management, empowerment, diversity, pay, training, and "family friendly culture," was up from 59.8 last year, 58.2 in 2007, and 62.5 in 2005.
In 2003 the Park Service's score was 64.1.
The latest survey found that teamwork in the Park Service is about the worst in any federal agency, with the Park Service's score ranking it 206 out of the 223 ranked. Even worse is the agency's work/life balance quotient, which placed the Park Service 220 out of the 223. Also poor was the perception of the agency's "strategic management," which earned the Park Service a ranking of 203 out of the 223.
The Park Service's best score, 97 out of 223, came in the category of "employee skills/mission match."
A request for a reaction from Park Service Director Jon Jarvis was not immediately granted. However, last September, the day after he was confirmed by the Senate as director, Mr. Jarvis dispatched a system-wide memo outlining his priorities, and topping them was a desire to strengthen the workforce.
"I come to Washington, in part, as your representative, your voice, and your advocate. The day-to-day operation of the parks and the work of our community assistance programs is accomplished by the dedicated men and women (including amazing volunteers) of the NPS who empty the trash, enter the payroll, rescue the lost, clear the trails, help communities, sample the air and water, and tell our compelling stories," he wrote. "Your welfare and safety will always be my top priority. To help you succeed, we will provide the funding, training, succession planning, recognition, facilities, and policies you need to get your work done."
The latest rankings would seem to indicate that Mr. Jarvis has a lot of work to accomplish in this arena.
Here's a look at the breakdown:
Best in Class Scores.........................Score.............Rank (out of varied totals)
Employee Skills/Mission Match........................78.9................97 of 223
Strategic Management.................................50.0................203 of 223
Teamwork.............................................59.6................206 of 223
Effective Leadership.................................51.0................183 of 223
Effective Leadership - Empowerment...................45.5................176 of 223
Effective Leadership - Fairness......................48.7................185 of 223
Effective Leadership - Leaders......................43.8................186 of 223
Effective Leadership - Supervisors..................62.2................180 of 223
Performance Based Rewards and Advancement...........43.7................177 of 223
Training and Development............................53.3................198 of 223
Support for Diversity...............................52.5................194 of 223
Pay.................................................62.4................179 of 223
Family Friendly Culture and Benefits................31.0................188 of 223
Work/Life Balance...................................51.4................220 of 223
Scores by Demographic..........................Score...........Rank (out of varied totals)
Female..........................................65.4................119 of 222
Male............................................64.3................161 of 221
40 and over.....................................64.6................146 of 223
Under 40........................................65.5................134 of 204
Asian...........................................68.0................54 of 79
Black or African-American.......................58.6................148 of 193
Hispanic or Latino..............................66.9................69 of 133
Multi-racial....................................60.3................24 of 42
White...........................................65.8................149 of 222
American Indian or Native American..............61.1................10 of 17
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Comments
I can't speak to the internal workings of the NPS but the rangers I have encountered have been some of the nicest, friendliest, knowledgeable people I have ever encountered.
In November of last year, the Director and NLC endorsed and supported the creation of a Workplace Enrichment Committee. WE (get it?) is made up of 25+ field employees, NLC members, and lead by a full-time program manager (me). I have 30 years of field experience, most recently as Superintendent at SF Maritime NHP and have long been invested in helping our workplace environment. WE are working in collaboration with many others on focusing and prioritizing our efforts to improve these rankings.
WE have folks looking at recruitment, retention, leadership capacity, training & development, diversity, internal communications, and other aspects that will engage our employees in a healthier way. Our employees are incredibly passionate about the work they do - just disappointed in many of the processes and systems that they need to do those jobs.
I'm encouraged by the improved rankings and the attention and commitment of our employees, leaders, and managers have to meeting these challenges. Building higher levels of employee satisfaction and engagement isn't easy - but few things that are worthwhile are - but it is doable.
They're definitely the best "places" to work, I mean your office is some of the most beautiful land in the world, but this doesn't surprise me. Besides the stated reasons just think of the isolation from the outside world at some of the parks. It may take you one to two hours just to get out of Yosemite. My friend who is a S&R Ranger at the Grand Canyon has to do all of his major grocery shopping in Flagstaff (or Williams) which means he goes once a month and fills his truck to the brim.
That being said, I agree with Anonymous. I've never met a ranger who hasn't been kind and knowledgeable and incredibly helpful and I deal with them on a daily basis throughout the country.
Unfortunately, this image that "your office is some of the most beautiful land in the world," is part of the problem. Most NPS employees do not work in the west and do not work in remote areas. There are more than 1500 employees in Washington DC, 500 in and around New York City, 300 in San Francisco/Oakland, many others in Atlanta, Omaha, and Denver. There are large parks near Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, and San Antonio. Most parks are small areas with insufficient staff to handle the workload of visitors, resource protection, law enforcement, maintenance, IT systems, data processing, etc. You have to look past the image of what people think working for the NPS is like to the reality of what it is like in order to understand these rankings. The results are not suprising. And what is the solution - as noted above - another task force. By my own counting, as a 30 year employee, this is at least the 12th such task force dealing with workforce improvement that I have seen.
Our culture continues to be: pay our folks as little as we can get away with considering human resource policies and hope that the fact that we live and work in beautiful places will make up for it. Well, it does, to some extent - I have lived and worked in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. But I can't eat rainbows and I can't send my kids to college with sunsets. I can get another job for more money, yes, but since we are talking about subjective workforce happiness it is a valid discussion about paychecks, perhaps best expressed in terms of parity.
That being said, the thing that most affects my job satisfaction in this organization is workload. After more than a decade here I see a wide discrepancy in managing workload factors. There is no consistency in applying well-established benchmarks for span-of-control and assigning work. the field folks have it pretty good. Workload for first-line supervisors and mid-level managers is very inconsistently applied with "punish the competent" being very much the rule not the exception. In the private sector this can be addressed through awarding bonuses and raises. In the government...not so much. Small merit awards are all we can do.
My two cents.
For those who misunderstand: Punish the competent = Pile work on your most effective employees until they reach their breaking point while ignoring your average and poor performers. I guess it does come down to leadership around here after all.
I know two very effective friends who have left the NPS recently becuase they were fed up with being fed more work because they were competent and their coworkers were not. Too bad.
Kate, I hope your WE committee does a commendable job and that Mr. Jarvis pays close attention to your recommendations. There was a time when the NPS was the most prestigious organization to work for in all of the Federal Government. I'd like to see it back at the top.
Owen
i had the best summer of my life working at mt.rushmore(seasonal maintenance)pay was not that great,the people i worked for were.i am 68 yrs. old ,and would go back there to work if i could.it sure as heck beats any job in d.c.
I am not surprised by this article. I have worked for the Park Service for 5 seasons, and it has been one bad work experience after another. The amazing amount of inefficiency and waste of tax payer money is astounding. It's not just in the Ranger Division- but in all divisions. I have seen workers sit around for hours and sometimes it’s because they actually have nothing to do- but they still get paid well to do it. The most toxic work environment in the Park Service is the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. There is vicious backbiting among the employees, and the management is some of the worst in the whole NPS. The turnover rate for "parkies" (not locals) is about every few months. That’s about as long as people can stand it before they need to move on. The management are really the ones to blame- they are very unsupportive of the employees, whether it’s with work issues or trying to get time off for family issues. It seems the worst of the rank and file are the ones that float to the top and find themselves in management positions, and they are not qualified or compassionate enough to deal with the people who work under them. A big problem with the NPS is how they treat their seasonal workers. The seasonal workers are the backbone of the NPS and they are treated like second class citizens at best. No wonder parks can’t get their employees to come back for two years in a row.
I'm saddened by the comments above.
We get these jobs by our own choosing, and most often because we have an intense (and yes, sometimes unhealthy) dedication to proecting lands, species, sites, events, whatever. And that means that our separation of work and life can be tenuous. I recently attended a supervisory training where the course instructor shared an interesting story (and no, I don't remember the source that he quoted): When personality traits of NPS employees were evaluated, they most strongly resembled those in what other line of work? You guessed it.... the clergy.
Frankly, even if it means flying out for groceries once a month I wouldn't have it any other way. If you don't like it and haven't been able to make successful inroads with anybody to instigate change, that's awful. But it certainly isn't representative of many of our experiences.
I wouldn't have it any other way either and the rural lifestyle in the wilderness is one of the things I absolutely, positively love about my job. But that isn't the part people are complaining about if you look at the statistics.
Compared to corporate culture and other federal agencies this one continues to put very little investment in their managers and supervisors to set them up for success. There are the minimum mandates and window- dressing leadership programs that reach out to something south of 1% of the total supervisory workforce. Some online training available. Meh.
The categories in the survey are all mostly above 50%. If I may be excused for trampling all over valid statistical analysis for a moment to make a loose correlation here, that means that we are doing more good and bad and more people are happy or not. But I'm sorry, if we can't do better than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?!?
Given that commentary from the field is starting to build on this posting, I would be curious to learn from NPS'ers willing to comment on this article about specific root causes to some of the ongoing problems and proposed solutions.
I wonder how much of the negative rankings posted above stem from seasonal employees who work essentially without benefits or hiring preferences for conversion to permanent employment status? Or, are these negative rankings composed entirely from individuals who are career Fedearal employees?
I'm very interested in knowing what it's going to take to put the NPS back on top of the list of the best places to work in the Federal Government.
In resonse to pkrnger-seasonal employees were excluded from the survey-full time permanent employees only-
One of the huge problems is workload-I'm middle management-I work 60+ hours a week during the summer, don't get OT or comp time for it, plus I commute over 100 total miles a day-Because of veterans preference i can't hire the most qualified applicants for seasonal jobs, especially front line supervisors-When I tell HR that the people on top of the list are not qualified for the job I'm told "train them" that means I get to do their job too-meanwhile highly qualified applicants with years of experience can't get the positions.
A couple of suggestions-Build more park housing! Allow bigger bonuses for excellent employees; Train people! Travel ceilings kill the ability to send anyone to training, OJT can only go so far, especially when I don't have time to do the training. We don get paid in sunsets-I rarely hear a complaint about salary-the complaints are about lack of permanent work, inability to advance and a serious lack of enough people to get the job done.
I have no complaint about my salary. It is too low for my debt, but that's my own doing (darn student loans!). Right now the park I work at is one of my favorites, but it does have some problems as would any job. I'd say the main issue here is lack of communication. It is difficult for departments to get together and talk about what's going on. Luckily we have monthly staff meetings that take care of some of that, but the rest of the time I'm a little confused about what's going on. The other day I got stuck on a backcountry road because no one told me that the road was actually gone. That would have been very helpful to know!
In the past, I've had a hard time at jobs because of the supervisors. I couldn't figure out how some of them made it when I acted much more professionally. I had one supervisor who would tell one ranger what another had said about him/her and it led to some major fights between staff. I also had another position where my lead ranger was constantly late, did poor scheduling, and often dissapeared for some 'quality time' with her boyfriend in the historic house while on the clock. I often found myself covering for her and when I complained about it to my supervisor I was accused of not being a team player. I also loath the lack of OT. I am still owed 10 hours worth of pay for forced OT and I doubt I'll ever see it.
On the whole, I love the NPS and would never work for anyone else. The problems I have had stem from individuals and not the agency itself.
Get OVER it, people! Who ever joined the NPS for salary? Who ever joined for individual recognition?
My experience in many sites is huge individual discretion to get the job done that you see needs doing. If you are sitting around, it is because you lack imagination or dedication. Who would want a supervisor trying to structure your day and how you go about it. My experience in the NPS is being judged by results.
One of the great things about the NPS is decentralization. You have the chance to make a difference where you are. If you cannot make a difference, before you start ranting, look in the mirror for the cause.
NPS is one of the only places in the US Government that permits highly individual people who really learn from their experience. The ones who emerge from this freedom are the people with character.
Rangers don't whine.
Almost forty years ago, I had the honor of being selected as an intake ranger and participated in about four years of intensive training across the country. Over that period, my classes participated in several evaluations of the NPS. Each time, supervision and management/leadership were identified as areas in need of significant improvement. The Service appears to have made little improvement over this period. There were some promising moments, for example, the mid-90s prospect of a $40 million training budget and the attempt at empowering "the field." Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of Horace Albright's parting directive to keep the NPS special and never let it become just another government agency. After a decade of multi-culti and PC-driven personnel management, the Service found itself embedded with far to many ego driven managers, many quite willing to sacrifice the mission and scores of dedicated career employees in order tor reach their power positions. Thankfully, that period seems to have peaked and we are returning to what appears to be the norm of mediocre/average supervision and management. Given the economic reality the agency faces, I doubt if much will change as we approach our centennial. Perhaps the NPS can make do with average supervision, but I doubt it can be effective with average leadership. One is either a leader or a follower, not much room in the middle for average leadership. And leadership skills can be taught as our military officer development programs have taught us over the past generation. I suggest that this could be an effective model for NPS leader development. I sincerely wish the organization well as I move into retirement. In all, it was a calling for me, I loved the mission and the resources and would do it all over again despite the rough spots.
Heaven save us from those people. You know, the ones who allow for people get to six figure legal settlements after they put their tongue down their secretary's throat while actively fomenting a cult of personality in their park (true story by the way.)
Oh, perhaps you meant the other kind of character.
Personally I would love to see more of the locals hired and trained for positions. In visiting different parks this past summer the ones that had a stake in the community made the best and most pleasant impressions, the others just went through the motions. I think one would say lack of common sense. Promotions to the supervisory level should not be based on what they did in the past at another location, because if so they think that they can use the same system at the new location which can basically rub the local population the wrong way. Again common sense, insight and initiative is lost and replaced by "Oh so what" attitude. Hopefully things will improve.
It's not just political correctness when I say the vast majority of the field personnel and first-line supervisors during my career were outstandingly competent individuals. Many routinely worked massive unpaid overtime and frequently went far beyond the duties of their position descriptions. A few even used their own money to feed, house, and equip idealistic young volunteers who would not otherwise have been able to stay! Anonymous of 9/2 (10:21) hit the nail right on the head with the comparison to clergy; for quite a few, the National Park Service is not just a job, it's a religion. The taxpayers are very fortunate to have all these dedicated men & women working for them and their parks.
However, I also saw way too much incompetence, waste, laziness, nepotism, cronyism, backstabbing, petty & not so petty theft, purging of whistleblowers, and yes, corruption. A lot of time & energy was wasted by dueling egos at headquarters on policy disputes and frequent 're-organizations', seemingly based mostly on personality conflicts. The table in this article and many comments in previous ones tell me much or most of the ongoing dissatisfaction of NPS employees is due to poor leadership and bad managers. That was all too often the case in my experience. Here's a few of the more colorful and egregious examples:
My immediate supervisor for over a decade was a completely incompetent poser, yet was loved by upper management & showered with achievement awards. The Native Americans I worked with called this pathological liar 'Walking Eagle', meaning he was so full of it he couldn't fly. Visiting former employees from
his previous park said the superintendent there ran him off after catching him loading a helicopter sling with dozens of cases of beer destined for the backcountry. A twenty-mile trail rehabilitation project he thought would take a summer required over a decade to complete, but his special claim to fame was a half-dozen under-designed $100K trail bridges that collapsed within 2-5 years.
His Chief of Maintenance thought his own job title was Chief of Development. He spent much of our all-employee meetings urging us to 'do more with less' and complaining about NEPA, restricted activites in wilderness, and other environmental roadblocks to his pet projects. He even got the park sued a couple times for shortcutting these processes. He personally presided over the contracted construction of four modest housing units that ended up costing over two million dollars. They would have been overpriced at $200K apiece. Faulty concrete slab foundations on clay soil resulted in the plumbing beginning to fail
within two years. For several years, he even allowed maintenance shop leaders to hire each other's kids & friends as seasonal laborers.
Then there was the Assistant Superintendent who got a paper transfer to the Denver Service Center, drawing 'high-roller' per diem of over a $100/day for a couple years as a project manager in the original park, without ever vacating his home.
I recall a District Ranger, with the nickname 'The Phantom', because for years, his employees usually didn't know where he was. He was eventually caught in a sting stealing entrance station receipts, then dismissed, tried, & convicted. At least he served a few years in the steel-toilet Hilton, the only perp I actually saw punished. The park management's accounting safeguards were so poor that they had no idea what the total loss was, but the town rumor was that he'd acquired three homes and six-figure gun collection during his ten-year tour of 'duty'.
Finally, I knew a seasonal laborer who rose to Maintenance Supervisor at about $60K/yr within the span of a few years. He bragged to me that he was untouchable because he'd pulled that park's drunken superintendent out of a park ditch after the office Christmas party. He later overloaded & caused a
contract helicopter to crash by neglecting to include himself in the load calculation; luckily no one was seriously injured. He kept his gravy job until retirement even after a manslaughter conviction resulting from a fiery auto crash that killed two local teenagers. They'd been drinking at his annual party outside the park where admission was charged. His benefactor & protector was a notorious bully who subsequently retired suddenly from his long superintendency because of workplace sexual harrassment.
All of this occurred before the year 2000 and all of these individuals are now retired. Some 'true believers' will probably object that these were isolated incidents, or that NPS management has somehow reformed. I certainly hope they're right, but honestly, I doubt it. I could fill pages with lesser examples. If a low-level employee like myself was aware of this much monkey business in just a few western parks, it's hard to avoid concluding there were many more such incidents, possibly even more serious. The recurring pattern of few or no consequences, or just transferring the offender, suggest a cover-your-ass management culture that would be very slow to change.
Testifying before the Senate Committee on Finance on January 30, 2003, Inspector General Devaney remarked: "Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I have served in the Federal Government for a little over 32 years. I have never seen an organization more unwilling to accept constructive criticism or
embrace new ideas than the National Park Service. Their culture is to fight fiercely to protect the status quo and reject any idea not their own."
This is from: http://www.workingnet.com/thunderbear/284.html I highly recommend this often hilarious, self-proclaimed 'Oldest Alternative Newsletter In The Federal Government" as a partial antidote to the too-often depressing reality of our National Park Service.
prkranger wonders "what it's going to take to put the NPS back on top...". I don't have answers, just a few fanciful suggestions to stimulate discussion:
An awful lot of money seems to be spent on non-essential travel & management junkets, which seems wasteful in the age of video conferencing. Apply the savings to improved training.
Eliminating the expensive, top-heavy, and largely redundant Regional Offices could free up money for the smaller, most underfunded units.
The larger parks I worked in tended to have too many layers of supervisors & managers with poorly defined responsibilities and often conflicting goals. It would be cheaper & increase efficiency to pay for early retirement for as many as possible above say, GS-14. Use the savings for housing and quality of life
improvements for the real workers.
The NPS needs a moritorium on new units until the existing ones are fully funded and the huge & probably growing list of deferred maintenance is sharply reduced. This would require action against their own self-interest by our bickering, grandstanding, do-nothing Congress, so don't hold your breath. Still, there must be other, much cheaper ways to protect deserving historical sites & natural habitats until better economic times and saner, more responsible legislators arrive, if they ever do.
I heartily agree with Anonymous and can't say it better: "In all, it was a calling for me, I loved the mission and the resources and would do it all over."
again despite the rough spots."
@d-2: If the job earns not enough to send your kids to college, then you won't get many good people. Or the people you get have to make painful sacrifices.
Dear Tahoma:
no government agency is ever fully funded. No american ideal is ever fully achieved. It is the job of every citizen and every government worker to fight for continual improvement.
Many of the most effective government workers and government agencies are able to articulate the real needs and fight for the funding. A moritorium on new units NEVER leads to more funding for the existing parks and programs. This has been tried repeatedly, and never works. Congress spends the available funds on those agencies whose programs ARE fought for. New parks are not for the benefit of employees, anyway, and should not be thwarted to benefit existing programs and parks unable to articulate their mission and fight for funding. New parks are established because they speak to the need of Americans for an unrecognized part of their heritage. It is really stupid to deprive Americans of their connection with what matters to them, in the belief that they will fund what government agents are unable to articulate.
The way to improve performance is to articulate the Mission, induce Pride not self-pity, recognize the accomplishments of the high achievers, and hold individuals accountable for errors of omission or commission. Workers should be able to explain how their work makes a real difference in achieving the Mission, and demonstrate how requested funding is essential, and when they get the funding show how they are using the money. If they are not willing to fight for a continually improved National Park Service, and sit back and get perfection handed to them, they are dreaming of a world that has not existed for 40 years.
The IG you cite may not understand that the fierce independence of the NPS is a reason parks have survived as well as they have. Sometimes some park people are just stubborn, but history has demonstrated the need to be cautious when reformers outside the Service want to change the policies or Mission.
On the other hand, if someone was really collecting per diem for living at home for YEARS, it was your job, and every one's job, to turn that person in to the IG or other appropriate official.
I agree with you, it is a calling, and I loved the Mission and the Resources. These things are worth fighting for, but not by ignoring critical new preservation initiatives and waiting for magic from the skies. Instead, everyone needs to work for the funding and the improvement of the Service and the System.
In my experience, every day I had a chance to make a difference in the National Park Service, and worked with thousands of other dedicated people who did.
d-2 is right, of course. It takes a village of competent employees to manage a park. Tahoma's characterization of imcompetent employees is not consistent with what I saw during my career in the NPS. Maybe I was just lucky, but the vast majority of the employees for whom or with whom I worked were bright, caring individuals who took their jobs seriously and dedicated themselves to the missions of preserving and protecting resources, providing quality visitor services and maintaining effective relationships with park interest groups.
With its decentralized authority, the NPS gives an individual employee the chance to make a difference. Certainly some of the "best places to work" data are disturbing, especially in the leadership area. I am hoping that the respondent above who talked about the WE program and her team will take a real close look at what is causing this.
If most of the problem of leadership is at the current superintendent level, I hope the newly-established superintendent's academy can begin to address these problems. When I became a superintendent, the attitude seemed to be one of "sink or swim". I can't imagine private enterprise placing someone in a senior management position without appropriate training and a mentor. The NPS should be doing the same thing.
Did I get rich during my 31 years? no Did I have a poor supervisor? yes (I would guess that almost everyone in the private sector has, also) Did I live in some poor park housing? yes Did I work more than 40 hours without compensation from time to time? yes Would I trade my career for any other? NO
Rick
Rick-
Perhaps I didn't make my point clear. It wasn't just "incompetent employees", it was incompetent and especially unethical middle and upper management. Even more disturbing actually, is that the long and expensive bureaucratic food-chain above them either didn't know or wanted to avoid the negative
publicity associated with correcting the situations. Maybe this is the downside of "decentralized authority"?
D-
Thanks for the additional details. I didn't realize moritoriums had been tried in the past. It sounds like you have considerable experience with the political subtleties of the NPS budget process? I'd be very interested in hearing more; perhaps you could write an article for NPT? The NPS may be more or less skillful at justifying it's wants & needs to Congress, but it was terrible at explaining that process to us bottom-feeders during my career. Since you seem pretty highly connected, and since they love re-organiztions, I'm wondering if you can tell me if there's ever been any serious discussion about removing the NPS from the Sodom & Gomorrah Interior Department?
I spent my last year constructing a database of wilderness and trail facilities and their condition (>11,000 structures) to try to demonstrate to that park's management "how requested funding is essential". The reaction from middle managers was literally "What's a database?". I doubt it was ever used.
As for it being "really stupid to deprive Americans of their connection with what matters to them...", my opinion is obviously different. Endless pie-in-the-sky economic growth matters very much to them as well, but our society is beginning to learn how unsustainable that is. A bureaucratic growth imperative is ultimately unsustainable also.
It may have been "my job" to expose the shennanigans I described above, but I'm sorry, I wasn't into career suicide. " ...all park, regional, and national resources are instantly marshalled to crucify the whistleblower."
http://www.workingnet.com/thunderbear/256.html
I'm intrigued by this study comparing the traits of NPSers to the clergy. Does anyone have a lead on where I could get a hold of that document?
Sadly being compared to the clergy is an ambivalent statement. Those who "head the call" have been known to take advantage of their flock, steal from the collection basket, encourage inquisitions, and molest young boys. Others suffer from a profound disillusionment and lose their faith.
I quite literally saw all the above during my tenure with the NPS.
I've always been a person who respects the "real world", and the 360 degree view that encompasses. From my perspective, the National Park Service is at the top of the list for professionalism, esprit-de-corps, and serving the public. Senior NPS management, park superintendents, and middle management fully understand the nuance and complextity of the mission and workforce. In fact, the National Parks are more engaged with positive reforms now than any other time in recent memory. Yes, you will find some negative people and problems in the periphery, but not out on the general landscape. Kudos to the men and women who wear the green and gray...
Ben Lord
Dear tahoma:
a few of your points:
I am not a fan of reorganizations; for the effort they put into it, you could actually get something done.
No, I don't think it takes a lot of sophistication to deal with either the budget process, or the congressional process, or the constituent-development process. But I DO think there are people who try to make it mysterious, and relegate it all to themselves. I learned a little about it by accident, and learned you can in fact teach most any intelligent person all they need to know about the political process in a day.
The key thing is to understand how meaningful PLACE is to many people. Important places have powerful political leverage. With good interpretation of the meaning of PLACE, parks are compelling, and can draw huge political support.
The national park service butget could be multiplied EIGHT TIMES, and not even be a rounding error in the federal budget. I also think there are problems in the US economic system that could make it unsustainable if managed badly, but I think the NPS budget has nothing to do with that. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that the parks enhance the US economy, draw visitors to the United States who visit parks on their trip and contribute more than $50 billion against our balance of payments. But more than that, parks emphasize what it means to be an American, the things that are the essence of the American experience, and the protection of these places adds richness to the United States. Recently the African Burial Ground in New York City was added to the National Park System, and it was stunning to see how much this mattered to so many people who previously had no idea where they came from, when they were brought to America in slavery. It turns out that 1/5 of the population of New York City during colonial times were enslaved, and that slavery was a northern, not just a southern experience. The national park service took over that site at a time people were anguished at how the United States Government seemed to be trying to erase this history. It mattered to them that the site was recognized as a site of national significance. The cost truly was trivial compared to the electricity of the connection with so many people with that site.
I think referring to something so vital as "a bureaucratic growth imperative" is either deeply cynical or beyond the basic understanding of why PLACES AND THEIR STORY matters so much to PEOPLE.
This is 'pie in the sky?' Unless this was just an impulsive retort we were truly at the opposite ends of the spectrum of people working for the National Park Service. The people I knew were believers, and people who could make real the yearnings for value of the visitor.
Finally, you make a good point in your 'database' example. One problem with the tendency of NPS people to see themselves as self contained is, the National Park Service does not foster training and employee development as much as it should. There are so many terrific examples of self-starters, so many people who prize their independence, and so little money for "Administration" (and such a huge drain of Administration funding to pay for all the Bush-era "accountability" processes) that the NPS spends next to nothing acquainting mid-level managers with the value of current management techniques. Too many people are left to fend for themselves, and are not mentored. Great individual achievement happens this way, but too many people fall by the way, and new management systems and even basic technique gets ignored.
But, I had a Regional Director who emphasized the value of management skills and heuristic use of data, so I know all it takes is some leadership to make this difference. However, do not assume that because people did not immediately understand or learn how to use the tools you provided, necessarily means the information and practice will never work their way into use. It takes persistence to make change, persistence so Management understands the reasons to push something, and persistence to allow busy or distracted people to understand why something new will help.
I agree with Benjamin Lord about the women and men in the NPS. Their substance and zeal has change my life, and every day enhances the experience of millions of visitors.
D-2
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I don't mean to extend our disagreements about expansion and corruption, but I feel compelled to correct an error in my second post. I should have written: "The reaction from SOME middle managers...". Also, my understanding is that at least parts of that database are used by resource management. I hope you're correct that it will be, or has been, used in the budgeting process as well.
So I watched the Ken Burns take on the Parks and fell in love. I have always known about the parks but now they feel like new friends I want to spend more time with and have begun looking for ways to do so.
I am also a Civil Servant working for NASA - an agency that ranks high on this list of best places to work in the Federal Gov't (though my specific center does not rank high, it barely eeks out a higher ranking than the Park Service) - and I live in an area where there are several National Parks with in a few hour's drive. I recently saw a job posting for the Park Service on the USAJOBS web page that is up my alley. Though it I am a budget guy but I am a hard working ethical person who likes to be around similar people and likes to help make the magic happen in my own behind-the-scenes way, helping out those who are the nuts and bolts (or in this case maybe trees and trails) folks. I like to work for an Agency where there is almost religious like dedication to the mission of the agency and from the comments I see the Park Service is a place like that.
But also after reading the comments I can't help but wonder how rampant is all the negative stuff? Would I want to leave behind what I have in one agency doing exciting things working on exciting projects to go work in a place where middle / regional management and park superintendents are portrayed so poorly? The grass doesn't seem so green on the Park Service side of the fence any more....
But also as I read these comments I see a common theme of lack of training for a variety of reasons: travel, budget, getting time away, etc. and I don't know what internal training resources the Park Service has but how easy is it for folks in the Park Service to find out about training put on by other Agencies and piggy-back on with them or do a detail to another agency? Yes, Park Service employees may not find things that will help answer specific tree and trail problems but other agencies that have lots of training resources may be able to provide applicable training.
For example NASA has classes on everything from converting over to using Windows 7, to project management and leadership development, to writing effective Statements of Work for work being contracted out, to effective communication skills, to using Microsoft Excel as a analytical tool. I would imagine places like the FBI and DEA have great to law enforcement training. Is there something closer offered by another agency that gets you what you need that may be less expensive? I wonder this because as part of rounding myself out I wanted to go do a 6 month detail in my center's procurement group instead it was suggested a DoD course that would give me the procurement training I want but not impact my own work load so much as going off on a detail for months
I agree with many of the things that have been said--even though they may seem contradictory. The Park Service has a great mission, terrific places to be (though not necessarily to work) and it benefits from the enthusiasm and dedication of workers in a wide variety of jobs. The employees that work with the public are nearly all enthusiastic, caring people that help make the public love the rangers and parks. The problems that plague the Service are accurately described by the survey. One of the worst problems being hit-or-miss leadership, especially at the superintendent and regional office level. And when poor choices are made and incompetent, dishonest or downright pathological people are put into those upper spots, upper management goes into CYA mode and refuses to correct the problem. In Alaska, one park recently had to lose almost 75% of its permanent staff before the regional office stepped in and replaced her. There are other superintendents that are just as bad, but no action has been taken to remove them. Once of the bad ones was just promoted to a bigger park in an effort to get her away from employees she has had problems with. It will only make the problems bigger too, but nothing will be done until things get critical. In fairness, there are some great superintendents in other national parks.
To the person who asked about working for the Park Service, I'd say it's a great place to work if you stay at the worker bee level--most of the really ugly stuff happens at the level of park management and above. Be prepared to move around if you get stuck with one of the really bad managers. Moving around is the norm for Park Service employees, so it won't get held against you. It's also a way to see more great parks! I've seen the Service refuse to act to resolve some astonishingly bad situations, but I still love the parks.