Recreation.gov.

Use this forum to post links to news stories from other websites - ones that other hikers might find interesting. This is not intended for original material or anecdotal information. You can reply to any news stories posted, but do not start a new thread without a link to a specific news story.
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oldandslow
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Recreation.gov.

Post by oldandslow » April 6th, 2023, 1:37 pm

The Walls Street Journal reports that the operator of Recreation.gov is realizing more than anticipated income from its contract with the government. A law suit has been filed in Virginia by seven individuals seeking class action status. It is not clear to me what relief is being sought.

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retired jerry
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by retired jerry » April 6th, 2023, 2:37 pm

somebody posted that on bpl

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/top ... eing-sued/

"From WSJ… photos edited out…

Visitors driving into Montana’s Glacier National Park this summer must buy a vehicle pass on Recreation.gov. The pass is free, but visitors pay a $2 fee to book the reservation.

Visitors might assume that, like entrance fees, the reservation charges help pay for improving trails around the park’s Running Eagle Falls or expanding the park’s volunteer program. But a chunk of the money ends up with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

Booz Allen runs Recreation.gov, the website and app where people book campsites, hikes and permits on U.S. public land. The company has a five-year contract that is up for renewal this year. In its bid for the work, Booz Allen used data provided by the government to estimate that over the first five years of the contract, it would receive $87 million, and a total of about $182 million over 10 years.

Booz Allen gets paid every time a user makes a reservation on Recreation.gov, per its government contract. That has earned the company money far beyond the projections in its bid.

Booz Allen invoiced the government for more than $140 million from October 2018 to November 2022, the most recent date available, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal in a public-records request. Ten months remain to be counted for that initial five-year period.

Visits to public lands surged during the pandemic as Americans vacationed outdoors, prompting many parks to add reservation systems to manage crowds and protect natural resources.

That has meant travelers often cannot visit popular public lands like Rocky Mountain National Park without booking on Recreation.gov first and paying a fee. Charges from around the nation include $2 to book an entry time to a park, $9 to enter a hiking lottery, and many others.

Booz Allen leadership has described the benefits of per-transaction fee structures like the one Recreation.gov uses. “One thing I learned in B-school, for all that money, it’s a small number times a big number is a big number,” Booz Allen president and chief executive Horacio Rozanski said at the 2019 Citi Global Technology Conference.

He also pointed to upgrades the company made to the site and called the per-transaction model a “much more effective and productive” way of doing business than by-the-hour payment models.

The arrangement has its critics, including members of a lawsuit against Booz Allen seeking class-action status, and other die-hard national park visitors. They say the government has let a multibillion-dollar company profit by charging for access to public lands—access that used to cost less, or nothing. The lawyers said in the suit that the company is “forcing American consumers to pay Ticketmaster-style junk fees to access national parks and other federal recreational lands.”

Booz Allen says such claims mischaracterize its work and its compensation structure. Recreation.gov officials say the arrangement is an example of efficiency in government: Users get a technologically sound website at no cost to taxpayers. Park officials say the system has eliminated hours spent processing cash transactions. Government officials also say the government has earned significantly more fee revenue than it would have without the contract and that Booz Allen’s bid was “substantially lower” than its competitors’ bids.

The pay-per-transaction model has existed for federal reservation services like Recreation.gov since the mid-1990s, federal officials say. They say the structure gives contractors incentive to continuously improve Recreation.gov.

Booz Allen isn’t the first company to run Recreation.gov. When the company bid for the contract in 2016, government officials gave it historical reservation data and figures for projected growth to inform how much operating the site might cost, the website’s government staffers say.

Since Booz Allen took over, the site’s scope has grown, along with the number of fees. Recreation.gov offers reservations at over 121,000 individual sites. Federal officials say the expanded services give park managers more tools to manage visitation, including venue reservations, timed-entry tickets, even permits to cut down Christmas trees on public land.

More than 23 million users had Recreation.gov accounts in the 2022 fiscal year. The site covers services from 13 different federal agencies, including the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Booz Allen’s contract allows it to run Recreation.gov for five years, with five subsequent one-year options based on performance. In addition to running the reservation system, the company also manages a customer call center and an internal mobile app for agencies.

It is hard for park visitors to know where their money goes when they make a reservation. Dozens of Recreation.gov users said they assumed all fees go to benefit the lands they visit.

In the invoices obtained by the Journal, the per-transaction amounts paid to Booz Allen were redacted, due to what the government says are trade secrets. Booz Allen has made a similar claim about these amounts in response to the recent suit.

About 10 million reservations were made on Recreation.gov in the 2022 fiscal year, up from 3.76 million in the 2019 fiscal year, according to Recreation.gov officials. They say the amount paid to Booz Allen for each transaction hasn’t changed in the five years and the recent visitation boom brought unexpected revenue through Recreation.gov, and thus to Booz Allen.

The Forest Service oversees the Recreation.gov contract. Gordie Blum, the agency’s acting director of recreation, heritage and volunteer resources, says having the company run the reservations system is a great value, given the technical requirements needed. It has generated hundreds of millions in recreation fees that go back to parks, forests and public lands, distinct from the fees that fund Booz Allen’s operation, Forest Service officials say.

Some visitors have welcomed the reservation programs as a tool that reduces crowds, which protects park wildlife and improves the experience for park goers. Others have criticized the restriction of entry to public lands and have lamented the difficulty in getting reservations.

“It really galls me that my tax dollars are going to maintaining that public asset, but then somebody is privately profiting off of it,” says Spencer Heinz, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer from Portland, Ore., who uses Recreation.gov for backpacking permits.

The lawsuit filed in January in Virginia by seven outdoor enthusiasts claims the fees deceive visitors into thinking that the money goes directly to aid public lands. The complaint says Booz Allen is charging fees similar to ambiguous entertainment and travel surcharges President Biden labeled “junk fees” in his February State of the Union address.

Booz Allen is seeking to dismiss the suit. A company spokeswoman said the 13 federal agencies determine whether to charge fees on Recreation.gov and how those fees are structured, collected and ultimately used. The plaintiffs’ lawyers say the fees violate a federal rule that allows public lands to charge recreation fees.

The lawyers cite a March 2022 ruling in a separate case, which found that a $2 Recreation.gov processing fee to access Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon wasn’t adopted properly because it wasn’t subject to public notice. The 2023 suit argues that the current fees are similarly illegal, and should be refunded to Recreation.gov users.

In its response to the suit, Booz Allen said in a legal filing that it can’t be tried separately from the federal agencies that use Recreation.gov. The company also said it doesn’t have the authority to refund the fees because it doesn’t charge travelers. “Booz Allen does not charge any fees to—nor does it receive any fees from—the users of Recreation.gov, including the plaintiffs,” the Booz Allen spokeswoman said in an email.

The company earns a commission for each transaction processed on Recreation.gov, according to 2022 testimony from Rick DeLappe, interagency program manager for Recreation.gov. The processing fees are first held in a U.S. Treasury account before they are paid to Booz Allen each month, he added.

Christine Wong, a 36-year-old physician from Honolulu, says she has submitted at least 10 applications to visit the popular destination known as the Wave near the Utah-Arizona border in Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness. Applying to the lottery for a chance to visit the Wave, which can accommodate 64 people each day, costs $9, whether the application is successful or not.

Of the $9, $5 ultimately goes to Booz Allen and $4 goes to the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the site, a BLM spokesman said.

Recreation.gov users submitted about 130,000 applications for permits to hike the Wave last year, generating about $648,200 for Booz Allen and $518,600 for the BLM, a BLM spokesman says. The BLM also collected about $35,500 in permit fees from successful applicants, he says.

Ms. Wong says she considered her numerous unsuccessful applications a donation, not a payment to a third party.

“I always assumed the fee went to the park,” she says."

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retired jerry
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by retired jerry » April 6th, 2023, 2:38 pm

and my first thought was that bosterson would appreciate this :)

gallione11
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by gallione11 » April 6th, 2023, 2:42 pm

"Technologically sound website" is laughable.

It can't handle the rush of people every day trying to reserve when things open up at 7 am. I'm grateful most of my camping is done in the state park system because trying to get a site from recreation.gov is a crapshoot at best. Was a little more fortunate this year, but multiple times last year, I'd click the reserve at 7, it'd eventually crap out saying too many people are using the site and then of course, oh, sorry site booked.

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drm
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by drm » April 7th, 2023, 8:16 am

Personally I have never had technical problems with the site, and for some national parks, the ability to know what is available before leaving home is a lot better than having to drive there and go to the ranger station and hope you can get something you want.

But the criticism of the fees is valid. As somebody who used to build websites for a living, I understand the costs well, and the fees that they charge are exorbitant. It is particularly galling to pay for permits where the entire cost goes to the website company. No more than 50c is justified in those cases. But in general this is not unique to recreation.gov. The site that sells Oregon state park campsites has exorbitant fees - as does tickemaster. So the website fee scam is pretty widespread, this is not unique to recreation.gov. I suppose it is tough to compare with ecommerce websites (Amazon, et al) since they don't separate them out. But suffice to say that Amazon is not adding multiple dollars per transaction, though sometimes these sites overcharge for shipping if you don't meet their free shipping threshold.

It is important to take into consideration the variation among the many locations. Many places have odd rules that are unique to the one location. You generally find the websites that sell things will not have that degree of variation. So paying a few dollars when you are reserving multiple nights at a campground is probably not unreasonable.

I would suggest that fees should not be more than 10% of the non-fee cost, with a cap of 50c on "free" permits. Even better would be to have a slightly higher percentage for most purchases and then have the free permits actually be free - subsidized by everything else.

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Charley
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by Charley » April 7th, 2023, 9:56 am

drm wrote:
April 7th, 2023, 8:16 am
But the criticism of the fees is valid. As somebody who used to build websites for a living, I understand the costs well, and the fees that they charge are exorbitant. It is particularly galling to pay for permits where the entire cost goes to the website company. ...
So paying a few dollars when you are reserving multiple nights at a campground is probably not unreasonable.

I would suggest that fees should not be more than 10% of the non-fee cost, with a cap of 50c on "free" permits. Even better would be to have a slightly higher percentage for most purchases and then have the free permits actually be free - subsidized by everything else.
I appreciate your balanced take, and your solution is probably the best we could ask for at this point.

I'm always sad when I see the privatization of provision of an existing government service. While the government supposedly negotiates the contract on citizens' behalf, the incentive structure isn't reliably favorable to our interests. (I heard a more egregious example recently regarding the enormous profit one company makes in Wisconsin, providing job training services- the program costs way more than simply giving unemployed people the cash).

Obviously, public and private partnerships are useful! Maybe it's more efficient to do reservations this way than through the local Ranger office or whatever.

However, I'm always suspicious that if private companies see enough potential profit to compete for these contracts, then we citizens are the ones paying that profit, and the profit would be a larger dollar figure than any cost savings from efficiency. Since I'm practically numerically illiterate, though, I couldn't possibly calculate to see if my hunch is true.
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Aimless
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by Aimless » April 7th, 2023, 10:27 am

I wish this class-action lawsuit all the luck in the world. The fee charged is so far above the cost of the service that it's a scandal, but breaking a government contract when the contractor delivers the services stipulated for the agreed upon fee, seems like an uphill battle. My hopes are not high. :(

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retired jerry
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by retired jerry » April 7th, 2023, 11:11 am

use ads to pay for it? rather than a fee?

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drm
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by drm » April 7th, 2023, 2:21 pm

Charley wrote:
April 7th, 2023, 9:56 am
I'm always sad when I see the privatization of provision of an existing government service.
One case we usually talk about is having private contractors run campgrounds or other fee facilities.

A website has to be far more efficient than having hundreds of place devise their own system, print the unique materials, and come up with staff for it. I wonder though who runs the regular Forest Service website. The question is whether it might be possible to do this website in-house. There would still be administrative costs, but no profit motive. And it should be as efficient as a private website.

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Water
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Re: Recreation.gov.

Post by Water » April 8th, 2023, 12:11 am

Since the federal government sets the fee scale, not Booz Allen, the plaintiffs have failed to state a valid claim.
Booz is full of shit when they say "oh we have no control over the fee schedule, that's set by the government!" They muddy the waters with their talk that the fees are only set by federal agencies. They refer to contractual payments as separate from fees charged to customers. And yet the customers see a separate 'fee' on the bill. Without any clarification or indication this isn't going to the booking agency. It is specifically demarcated in the customer transaction but without any clarification that it will be paid to a private business. If the contractual payments customers pay for using rec.gov were truly set by the government, they absolutely would not be redacted nor in the contract would they be portrayed as "This is evident in our fee structure detailed in Tab C- Schedule B, Bid Schedule."

It is disingenuous at best to say 'our fee structure' and then claim they do not set the fee scale, more like a lie.

The contract can be viewed here:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/default/f ... 9%5D_0.pdf

Page 206 of PDF, page 28/56 of Attachment 13.
2.5 Balancing Revenue and Risks

Booz Allen approaches each client engagement as an opportunity for partnership to achieve shared goals and critical missions. We believe that it is essential to align our goals with those of our clients to achieve the success of any program. Driving increased transactions on Recreation.gov is part of the story, but ultimately our support should lead to the sustainment of our public lands and waters for the education and enjoyment of this and future generations. In this spirit, Booz Allen is committed to balancing revenue and risks with the Government during the execution of this program.

This is evident in our fee structure detailed in Tab C- Schedule B, Bid Schedule.

<REDACTED>

When evaluating our pricing, the Government should note several key aspects of our fee structure:

<REDACTED>
excuse the language but FUCK THIS COMPANY . What a bunch of total BS about ultimate support for sustainment of public lands and enjoyment for future generations. Thankfully they say the quiet part out loud, driving increased transactions on their website is the entire goal. If they can glomm on some lip service and green washing (probably using language from the RFP), their shareholders give no care as long as they're making a profit.

The crux of the Kotab lawsuit is the FLREA requires all fees to be publicly disclosed during the public participation process and frankly when the FS or BLM says it will cost $X to get a permit/reserve a campsite/etc, and the cost paid by the public is higher than that, it is in violation of FLREA. Unfortunately public agencies are all too happy to defer any responsibility and point at Booz, and Booz is more than happy to say "it's not us, we are just invoicing per the contract". Oh, I guess nobody is responsible, gosh what a complicated thing, I guess it can never be figured out!
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