Examining Collaboration within U.S. National Park Service Advisory Committees
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18666/JPRA-2020-10047Keywords:
Collaborative governance, advisory committees, stakeholder participation, public participation, park managementAbstract
This study develops an evaluative tool for assessing collaboration within U.S. National Park Service (NPS) Federal Advisory Committees. Advisory committees are one of the mechanisms the NPS uses for active community participation. However, questions concerning the effective use of advisory committees have arisen in recent years, and because of this, a mass review of these committees, ordered by the Trump Administration, has led to questions about the efficacy and success of advisory committees. While a traditional metric that is used to judge success of these committees is the percent of recommendations that are implemented by the NPS, this metric does not recognize the synergistic benefits these forums provide for interaction, discussion, and collaboration. Drawing on an index of nine indicators that are extracted from the body of literature on collaborative governance, such as leadership and openness, a novel tool was created to measure collaboration within advisory committees. Through an analysis of committee meeting minutes spanning six cases, this paper finds that advisory committees tend to be collaborative and demonstrate that these committees are more than just a veil of participation or simply filling a required part of the public participation process. Committees were also found to play a valuable partnership role in the parks, acting as a liaison for the local communities and increasing transparency of NPS decision making.
From the information presented, formal federal advisory committees offer a means to build greater collaborative partnerships with local representatives and experts. While members of the public did play an active role in a few of the committees analyzed, greater attention should be given to inclusion of members of the local populace during committee meetings, if one of the primary purposes of the specific committee is to garner the support of the local communities and strengthen the recommendations for adoption. The index and tool developed in this paper provides a method for management officials to further evaluate their committees, and their interactions with representatives and the local populace more generally, to better understand the collaborative role their committees can play. Although this paper focused on committees with ties to local communities, the tool and the insights garnered on key collaborative indicators, could be applied too national-level committees and non-FACA committees.
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Sagamore Publishing LLC (hereinafter the “Copyright Owner”)
Journal Publishing Copyright Agreement for Authors
PLEASE REVIEW OUR POLICIES AND THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT, AND INDICATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS BY CHECKING THE ‘AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS COPYRIGHT NOTICE’ CHECKBOX BELOW.
I understand that by submitting an article to Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, I am granting the copyright to the article submitted for consideration for publication in Journal of Park and Recreation Administration to the Copyright Owner. If after consideration of the Editor of the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, the article is not accepted for publication, all copyright covered under this agreement will be automatically returned to the Author(s).
THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT
Assignment of Copyright
I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript I am submitting in this online procedure and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when the article is accepted for publication.
Reversion of Rights
Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later be rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in “Articles in Press” form, in which case all rights will revert to the Author.
Retention of Rights for Scholarly Purposes
I understand that I retain or am hereby granted the Retained Rights. The Retained Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.
All journal material is under a 12 month embargo. Authors who would like to have their articles available as open access should contact gbates@sagamorepub.com for further information.
In the case of the Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article, the Retained Rights exclude Commercial Use, other than use by the author in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works or to extend the Article to book length form or re-use by the author of portions or excerpts in other works.
Published Journal Article: the author may share a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI.
Author Representations
- The Article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated author(s) and has not been published elsewhere.
- The Article was not submitted for review to another journal while under review by this journal and will not be submitted to any other journal.
- The Article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.
- I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in the Article.
- If the Article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this Journal Publishing Agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.