NPS Managers Circumvented Contracting Regulations to Pay Over $1 Million to a Vendor Without Competition

We investigated allegations that two National Park Service (NPS) managers violated contracting regulations and procedures by using the Standard Form 182 (SF-182), which is meant to fund standardized training, to pay a company for extended work on an internal NPS training website. We also investigated allegations that NPS employees improperly hired NPS retirees and then re-issued or re-activated their Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards. We found that the two NPS managers, who oversaw aspects of NPS training programs, improperly used the SF-182 to pay a company $1,041,117 to develop and maintain an internal training website, circumventing contracting regulations. The two NPS managers have since left the agency. We also found that one of the managers retained his PIV card after retiring and had another employee re-enable the card after he left Federal service, in violation of departmental policy. We also discovered a separate instance in which an NPS retiree performed fiscal and budget-related services for an NPS training center without a contract. The NPS retiree received a new PIV card under the guise of an unrelated contract.