A recommendation by the Department of Energy’s Inspector General to consider shuttering some of DOE’s national laboratories has not gained a lot of traction, IG Gregory Friedman told the House Science, Space and Technology Oversight Subcommittee late last week. In 2011, the IG said suggested a “BRAC-style” commission should be formed to examine consolidating parts of DOE’s lab complex, including its nuclear weapons laboratories. Friedman said the labs spend about $11 billion a year, with 35 to 40 percent of that coming in administrative costs. “Our view is that given the current economic times, there ought to be a thoughtful approach, taking politics out of the mix if that’s at all humanly possible, to determine whether all of those labs make sense; whether there aren’t ways of consolidating so that more of what is currently devoted to administrative costs could be devoted to direct science would be possible,” Friedman said. “Our recommendation has not been adopted and I might say there are a number of members of Congress who have said it was dead on arrival. We made the recommendation because we thought it was the right thing to do and the time has come for a reevaluation but it has not been received with a great deal of acceptance. No white smoke you might say.”
In response to concerns raised by the committee about the security breach at the Y-12 National Security Complex last July, Friedman also continued to advocate for an overhaul to contractor oversight across the DOE complex, calling contracting DOE’s “weak underbelly.” He noted that contractor oversight is a “long-standing issue, and finding that right balance is extremely difficult. A number of administrations have tried and made valiant efforts. The contractors frequently push back. Sometimes their interests and the Department’s interests … are not always exactly parallel to that of the Department. Finding the right balance is tricky but it seems to me that’s the avenue we need to pursue.”
