Reinventing the Recreation.gov Customer Experience

From majestic national parks to important cultural landmarks and other public lands, the United States offers experiences that exist nowhere else in the world. An interagency coalition of 12 federal partners, including the Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service, wanted to transform how millions of visitors discover the nation’s public lands, which include more than 4,000 federal parks, forests, lakes, and cultural destinations across the U.S.

Booz Allen helped these federal partners reinvent Recreation.gov, building it from the ground up with modern e-commerce solutions for a transformed digital customer experience (CX). These federal partners also wanted to deliver value for the passionate field employees who give each facility a voice, freeing them up to spend more time with visitors. The result is a one-stop shop for trip information, planning, and reservations from coast to coast—and demonstrates the potential of a new acquisition model that is revolutionizing the way the federal government partners with industry to serve the public. 

Modernizing the digital customer experience is a priority for federal agencies, and Recreation.gov was no exception. More than half a billion people visit federal lands and waters each year. Visitors planning those visits and vacations expect an experience consistent with how they interact every day on commercial websites and mobile apps. The employee experience is also critical. Thousands of federal land and facility managers working in the field needed a self-service, modern platform to streamline operations and administrative tasks so they could concentrate on what they love: visitor and resource management.

Interagency partners understood that the website needed a modern reboot with modular architecture and open-source technologies like those used by commercial e-commerce sites. They envisioned a reimagined, cloud-native digital platform that would give Recreation.gov visitors a more modern customer experience—one that truly revolutionizes how people explore the nation’s public lands.

Designed with citizen experiences in mind, the reinvented platform is founded on extensive user research and feedback from visitors and field staff. Prior to the launch of the platform, Booz Allen conducted research with more than 300 users and developed a brand strategy that is based on current user behaviors consistently applied across all digital platforms. The user experience of the platform continues to be optimized, with the Recreation.gov team connecting with tens of thousands each year to refine and improve the platform.

Using modern e-commerce technologies, our Booz Allen team of software engineers, cloud architects, CX specialists, and other experts built the new Recreation.gov from scratch in 15 months. We implemented DevSecOps practices and a microservice model to enable continuous delivery and a cycle of improvement that rapidly responds to user feedback and changing market conditions. We brought an advanced approach to agile software development while keeping it flexible, scalable, and secure. The platform is deployed into Amazon Web Services cloud architecture, which provides substantial redundancy, resiliency, and 99.99998% uptime.

Recreation.gov was an investment for Booz Allen, designed collaboratively with participating agencies, but at no cost to the federal government. Instead of a traditional cost structure, the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact. This is a true public-private partnership—it uses no government money.

*Source: Recreation.gov FY21 Annual Report

Launched in October 2018, the new Recreation.gov brings the government’s e-commerce platform into the 21st century—using cloud-native microservices and continuous delivery to meet availability, scalability, and delivery requirements. Now in its fourth year of operation, in FY21 alone the platform has contributed to approximately 9.03 million online transactions, more than 1.55 million mobile app downloads, and 4.25 million camping reservations.

The site is on par with modern e-commerce: crisp, clean, and beautiful. It uses the same technology as Netflix to display the nation’s most beautiful places and has a 4.8 rating in the Apple and Google Play Stores. While many federal sites push out just a few software changes every year, the new site makes approximately 5,000 updates annually without disrupting the system. Field managers can make changes to content, communications, and business rules in real time versus in days or weeks.

Managing reservations for the vast number of inventory that the website offers presents unique challenges and opportunities. In March 2020, the emergence of COVID-19 transformed the country. Together, Booz Allen and our federal partners quickly identified and launched new functionality to help facilities reopen safely, including features such as contactless payment, timed entry, and scan & pay. These tools enabled federal lands to offer safe and convenient experiences to the public while abiding by local and federal guidelines. 

With Booz Allen’s technical expertise, Recreation.gov has elevated how people experience the nation’s federal lands and waterways. It has also provided field staff with the tools they need to better manage their locations, reducing their administrative tasks so they can focus more time on visitors—letting rangers be rangers. With more than 45 million users in FY21, the site has generated more than $270 million in revenue for the federal government, fielded more than 1.25 million contact center calls, and garnered more than 87.1 million website sessions.

Due to the scale and impact of Recreation.gov’s public-facing services, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) selected the site as a high-impact service provider, meaning OMB regularly meets with interagency partners to understand how the site is continuously improving the customer experience. To that end, Booz Allen is continually tracking and measuring CX metrics to report back. For example, we launched and conducted a customer survey, collecting and analyzing over 67,000 responses. This data is used to continuously update and improve the user experience by building new features, updating the design and user flow, or changing how the site operates to better meet user needs and expectations. This type of engagement with users at key points in their journey—and the collection of real, meaningful feedback—ensures the platform continues to adapt to meet visitor needs.

Recreation.gov has become the model for how the federal government incorporates a consumer-friendly design with agile development, cognitive and cloud technologies, and secure DevSecOps to transform customer experiences. In addition, as a true public-private partnership, it’s paving the way for how the federal government and industry can elevate the .gov experience to meet .com expectations.

Additional Resources:

Building a Website that Brings the Outdoors, Indoors

Paving the Way for Government to Improve the Digital Customer Experience

Seeking Happy Campers, Government Offers Revamped Travel Portal