Relationships between NNSA and weapons labs are works in progress

Leadership of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) should step up efforts to mend frayed relationships with the contractors who operate the agency’s nuclear weapons laboratories and weapons production facilities, says a March report by members of two federally chartered academies. The NNSA, a semiautonomous agency of the Department of Energy, also lacks measures of success for improving those relations. “There remains considerable ambiguity in the roles, responsibilities, authorities, and accountability,” among NNSA officials and counterparts at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia national laboratories, the report says.

The critiques and recommendations come from a committee of the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Cochaired by Jill Dahlburg of the US Naval Research Laboratory and Robert Shea of Grant Thornton, the panel commended the NNSA for its attention to contractor relations and noted the establishment of a specific policy office within the agency. But it calls for greater urgency in addressing the problems. “It is critical that this momentum be sustained—a challenging requirement given the transition in top leadership and future uncertainty regarding funding and priorities,” the report says.

Lab contractors have long complained about micromanagement and a lack of trust that has built up over time in their relationship with the NNSA (see Physics Today, March 2017, page 27 ). Contractors are subject to oversight from multiple offices within DOE and the NNSA and by the Government Accountability Office, the DOE inspector general, state and local agencies, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, and other regulators. A 2014 commission cochaired by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine and retired admiral Richard Mies noted that “excessive and uncoordinated inspections, audits, and formal data calls fuel inefficiencies and generate little value added; in fact, they may detract from the desired safety or security outcome.”

Other reports have enumerated NNSA practices that are especially burdensome, including agency approval of employee compensation plans, labor negotiations, benefits packages, pension contributions, retaining of outside counsel, and employee travel.

The new report reviews progress made in implementing the recommendations issued by two separate congressionally mandated commissions to reduce the long-simmering tensions between the NNSA and the labs. The fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act also called on the NNSA to assess the implementation of its recently released plan to address contractor relations.

“In addition to building a more collaborative and mission-focused culture, DOE and NNSA have initiated a number of efforts to clarify roles and responsibilities and to strengthen communication and partnerships across the nuclear security enterprise,” an NNSA spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “We are carefully reviewing the recommendations contained in this interim report, and look forward to working with the academies as we continuously improve our governance and management processes.”

In its implementation plan , released last December, the NNSA said it will assign a dedicated official the job of coordinating audits and visits and ensuring they aren’t duplicative. But according to the March panel report, “the laboratory directors have not yet sensed a decline in the number of audits, inspections, and data calls.” And the new report says that other steps the NNSA promised for streamlining office governance of the labs don’t adequately address the burden imposed by certain DOE offices, such as those that regulate safety and security.

Moreover, the committee says, oversight from the DOE inspector general and the Government Accountability Office seems not to have abated: “Those outside investigations are generally inflexible about scheduling, leveraging existing sources of information, or relaxing their deadlines so as to allow the laboratories to balance competing requirements.”

The committee is to report on NNSA’s progress at biannual intervals through 2020.