Mike Nartker
WC Monitor
2/20/2015
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board needs to do more to further improve internal procedures and controls, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released late this week. Before 2013, the Board had few written policies and procedures for its five members and its technical staff, according to the GAO. Since then, the Board has developed written procedures for its members “but some are inconsistently followed or do not align with Board practices,” and few of the planned written policies and procedures for the technical staff had been completed as of September, the report says. “DNFSB’s policies and procedures—when fully developed and implemented—should help provide the Board and staff better assurance that the agency’s operations are effective and efficient,” the GAO said.
Explaining the lack of written policies and procedures for the Board’s technical staff prior to 2013, the GAO report states, “According to DNFSB officials, the agency did not have a need in the past for detailed written policies and procedures for technical work because the technical staff are experts and have sufficient knowledge to perform their work, and management had knowledge about the daily operations of technical staff. DNFSB officials told us that there were no standard ways of conducting technical staff work and that staff would perform the same work in different ways based on their expert knowledge.” The report adds, “According to a DNFSB document, work products were consistently reviewed and carefully screened by management for technical accuracy and consistency.”
The Board currently plans to implement 90 policies and procedures for its technical staff through Fiscal Year 2016, covering a variety of activities such as conducting staff reviews, developing work products and tracking and resolution of issues, among others. As of September, 16 of the 90 planned policies and procedures had been implemented, with another 50 in development, according to the GAO.
Better Records Needed for Internal Control Activities
The GAO also identified needed improvements in how the Board conducts internal control assessments to determine if policies and procedures are effective or need change. While the Board plans to increase the number and scope of such assessments, “without complete records documenting DNFSB’s internal control assessment activities, consistent with OMB’s guidance, the agency does not have an institutional record to help ensure that it is performing all the steps of its internal control assessment process,” the report says.
The GAO went on to say, “Furthermore, without segregating the responsibilities among different people in reviews of assessments of internal control, DNFSB does not have reasonable assurance that control activities are being accurately performed. Also, although it has a mechanism to track programs that are judged ‘ineffective,’ without a similar formal mechanism within the ECIC [Executive Committee on Internal Controls] to track and ensure the prompt resolution of all problems identified in its assessments, DNFSB cannot provide reasonable assurance that all internal control problems are being corrected in a timely manner.”
