NPS - Recreation Business Management System (RBMS)
Investment ID: 010-000001985
Overview
Program Title
NPS - Recreation Business Management System (RBMS)
Description
The National Park Service (NPS) Recreation Business Management System (RBMS) is a service wide point-of-sale system managed by the NPS Recreation Fee Management Program to support the collection of, accounting for, and reporting on user recreation fees from visitors at 150+ NPS fee collection sites, including entrance stations, visitor centers, and backcountry offices. RBMS consists of on-premises Windows-based point-of-sale devices accessing a SaaS (Software as a Service) implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce in the Microsoft Azure Commercial Cloud, and includes Power BI-based reporting, dashboards, and business analytics on recreation fee collection activities.
Type of Program
Major IT Investments
Multi-Agency Category
Not Applicable
Investment Detail
The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) provides the statutory authority for the NPS to collect entrance and other recreation fees at NPS sites. The primary purpose of the investment was to consolidate and centralize the formerly ad-hoc, park-driven approach to fee collections, accountability, and reporting. RBMS has now been deployed to 145 fee-collecting parks. The results are: (1) FLREA fees are collected using a centrally-managed and acquired system; (2) the application is funded by the centralized acquisition; (3) employees do not have to be retrained as they move from park to park; (4) centralized reports are available at the HQ, regional, and park levels on comprehensive fee-collecting data; (5) approaches to auditing and accountability are standardized, greatly reducing the risk of fraud; (6) cash-free collection operations are supported, reducing the risk of fraud and employee safety concerns associated with the handling of cash; and (7) new products, pricing, and policies can be deployed easily and centrally service-wide; and (8) a comprehensive help desk and cloud architecture both support high-availability of fee collecting services.