The following interview with Glenn Podonsky, Director of the Department of Energy’s new Office of Independent Enterprise Assessments; and Matthew Moury, acting Associate Under Secretary for Environment, Health, Safety and Security, was conducted by ExchangeMonitor Publications Editor-in-Chief Mike Nartker.

NS&D Monitor
5/30/2014

To start things off, what was the thinking behind the creation of this new structure for health and safety and security, to separate out this new Office of Independent Enterprise Assessment from the policy functions for safety and security? How does this practically differ, especially when it comes to oversight and enforcement, than the structure in place for DOE’s previous Office of Health, Safety and Security?

Podonsky: Great question. I was there at the ground level with the Secretary last May when he started the discussions with me. He was really looking at implementing a broad reorganization for the entire Department. And one of the things, as you know, last July he established the Under Secretary for Management and Performance. And he wanted to consolidate all the primary mission-support organizations. And in just a natural step in discussions that I was having with him one-on-one, we talked about putting all the HSS mission-support functions in with the new structure, so that they would be better aligned. It also provided the opportunity for him to strengthen the independent assessment and enforcement responsibilities. I actually led a task force to really take a look at how this would work, and we came to a unilateral decision to recommend to the secretary to proceed with what the secretary envisioned, which was in fact having all the support mission functions together and having the independent assessment group and enforcement separate. The reason we came to that conclusion is that what the Secretary wanted is he really wanted to have a check and balance organization that was doing more in the lines of assessing than assisting.

So to answer your question, over the last four-and-a-half, five years, we had a duality role of HSS which was both assisting generating policy and inspecting. And there is a natural conflict of interest when you’re generating the policy for the Department on all these areas and then you are inspecting against that policy. The Secretary felt passionately about making sure that we didn’t confuse the field with oversight versus policy. And quite candidly, you know, I think it was a great decision that he arrived at. I think it’s going to help the Department immensely in both clarifying its policy as well as we really applaud the initiative for strengthening the enforcement and the oversight function of the Department.

Now that the Office of Independent Enterprise Assessment is separate from the policy side and continues to report to the Secretary as HSS did, what if any changes in practice then does that mean for the Office of Independent Enterprise Assessment? How will that function differently than it did when it was part of HSS? If I’m an employee at the DOE site or a contractor at a DOE site, how then does this change what I see than what I did before?

Podonsky: Well, it’s exercising the Secretary’s priorities of wanting to know exactly how the performance of the Department is in so many areas, be it cyber security, emergency management, physical security, worker health and safety, nuclear safety. He wants us to sit back and analyze the information—what does it mean broadly to the management of his Department. As a self-regulating entity, I believe that this will provide a much clearer, consistent application of these very technically competent resources to better assess how the Department is performing in all the areas I just mentioned, and to do it in a way that will provoke a positive change and improvement in terms of the Department, and ultimately make the Department a more successful organization in terms of its achieving its mission in a safe and secure fashion.

Names and labels can carry a lot of meaning, and looking at the name of your new office, Office of Independent Enterprise Assessment, where do you see the role of enforcement coming in? ‘Assessment’ sounds somewhat like a ‘watchers on the wall’ type role. How will this office carry out enforcement functions when there are found to be violations of the Department’s safety and security regulations?

Podonsky: The secretary actually named the office. This was his name, Independent Enterprise Assessments, because he did not want it to be ‘independent oversight’ to leave the impression that we were doing the line’s job. But he wanted us to really be the independent organization that reported to him on the effectiveness of the Department. So there will be a myriad of inspections, assessments, site leads, just a whole plethora of tools in our toolkit to really evaluate the performance of the Department in all those areas that I mentioned earlier, the cyber, the emergency management, the safety, the physical security. The enforcement piece will continue to be judiciously administered with the statutory enforcement authorities given to us by Congress to basically reinforce the DOE’s expectations that the DOE missions have to be accomplished safely and securely.

So that hasn’t changed, and what will happen is we are examining right now as we speak how to make that even more timely an operation, because as you well know, over the last 15, 20 years, there are enforcement actions that sometime take upward of a year-and-a-half to two years after an event. One of the things that we are examining is while Congress gave the statutory authorities to the Department, they didn’t tell us exactly how to implement it. The way it started to be implemented back in 1995 was very deliberative and continues to be. But we need to look at it, and Secretary has asked us to strengthen the enforcement actions by having the processes even more timely.

Is there something lost when enforcement actions can take years to complete, in terms of changing the behavior of a contractor and in terms of rectifying problems? Does it make more difficult to finding improvements and getting those implemented in a timely manner so they can be effective?

Podonsky: I think, you know, as an observer back in the ‘90s and owning it in the last eight years, I would say to you that it probably could be more effective if it’s more timely. The timeliness is connected to the diligence which we apply the statutory authorities. One of the things I’m already doing is examining with site managers, lab directors, program managers, assistant secretaries and under secretaries is how we can have this process more aligned with the already existing contract award fee program. Because what you really want with enforcement is you want to get the attention of the contractor that this is serious when they have a violation and the Secretary is serious about this program.

To answer your question specifically on do I think it has lost any of its effectiveness because of timeliness, you know, I would be disingenuous if I said that it’s as effective as it could be. If you have an enforcement action that takes place two years after an event and the contractor has already been challenged with its award fee, then you could, in my opinion, bring up a degree of cynicism is how late the enforcement action came. So I believe this reinvigoration of the program under the Secretary’s leadership is going to enhance what Congress has already given us.

Concerning the timeliness of DOE investigations, it’s now almost three years since an employee at the Office of River Protection filed a complaint over alleged safety and design issues at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. It’s been more than a year since draft findings from investigation were made public that outlined a litany of concerns. Can you comment at all as to the status of that investigation and when any final results may be made public?

Podonsky: Well, what I can do, I can tell you that the enforcement folks work diligently on the enforcement investigations. They are committed to a careful and thorough review. They’re taking the time necessary. And while you and I may look at this and say this is a long time, they have to carefully consider all the facts and circumstances of each of the cases and complete, you know, very complex, deliberative evaluations. Because when they speak it’s a very serious result. And so I would just say they’re doing due diligence to do the job. As I said earlier, and part of that and part of what the Secretary has asked me to do is see if there’s other ways to speed up the time without jeopardizing the preciseness in which we’re doing it.

There appears to be, at least based on publicly available information, a shift in how DOE has performed oversight and enforcement. In recent years, the number of Preliminary Notices of Violation, which can oftentimes carry financial penalties, DOE has imposed has dropped significantly. In addition, the use of fines also appears to be dropping—the PNOV issued last year to Brookhaven National Laboratory for a worker accident there had no fine for the contractor but instead only referenced the fee reduction that had occurred. This year we’ve seen what seems to an increase in the use of enforcement letters that don’t carry penalties. Has there been a shift away from a punitive approach to dealing with contractors who are suspected, or may have been found to have violated safety and security requirements?

Podonsky; No, there is really no shift in it in spite of the facts that you’re stating here. The fact of the matter is that the enforcement oversight group, they do a very careful and thorough review of the facts. And this is where I’m having them re-examine right now how we can make it on a faster track. In terms of punitive, I would tell you I’ve asked the question, and the Secretary wants us to follow up with him as well, is how can we make sure that the authorities that Congress gave us, how can we make sure that we’re utilizing them to the fullest extent possible.

Ultimately, enforcement is meant to change behavior and get the contractor’s attention. If you look at the financial penalties that have been assigned, with very few exceptions—I think there was one exception a few years ago—the penalties are not nearly as great financially as some of the award fee consequences of some of these events. So it’s really not the dollar amount that grabs the attention of the contractor. They’re very concerned about their credibility and their reputation as being a corporation that is dedicated to worker health and safety and security of national assets. So there’s a lot involved in it. As I said earlier, since we’ve been following the same basic governance model of enforcement since 1995, I think one of the things that the Secretary wants us to do in the new organization is to examine how we can make it more rigorous and more useful to improving the Department’s performance. At the end of the day that’s what we want. We want to improve the Department’s performance.

Last year, HSS performed a safety culture review on itself and the results, I think it’s fair to say, were not very positive. I know DOE has placed a heavy emphasis broadly across the Department on improving safety culture. How will the new structure for the Department’s health, safety and security functions address the concerns raised in that review and led to safety culture improvements?

Podonsky: There was a lot of lessons learned from that review that I had commissioned. As I say, I called the artillery in on my own site because I wanted to make sure that we were looking at ourselves as rigorously as we were looking at all the programs out there. And the lessons learned for us are continuing today even with the new IEA in terms of all the findings. We’re continuing to address them even in the smaller organization. And I’m pretty confident that that’s what Matt is doing as well. Matt?

Moury: That’s exactly right. I mean, a lot of work was done before under Glenn to put all of the various actions and lessons learned together. In the new organization we are going to continue that down that same path. And as the organization that’s going to provide assistance to the program officers and the line organizations, we’ll be the advocates for our safety culture and provide whatever assistance we can to the program officers in the field in that area.

Given that role, Matt, does that add an urgency to improving safety culture on the safety and security side? I imagine you have to get your own house in order before you can weigh in and help others.

Moury: Well, I think it does. I believe the senior managers in my new organization have that same feeling that there is some importance and some timeliness required to addressing the issues that were already laid out by Glenn in the old organization. So we’re stepping right out on it. As a matter of fact we’re meeting this week to keep moving that forward. I think that we have to be the organization that others look to as the standard by which others judge their own safety culture against. So we do have some actions we have to take.

What do you see as the actions left to be completed? I know culture is not something that changes overnight and it’s a ongoing process, but in terms of concrete actions, what do you see is still left to be performed?

Moury: The challenge right now is really the implementation phase. I mean, a lot of the steps that were taken so far were putting what I would call artifacts, descriptions—you know, here is what we want to do, our core values. The next step and the one that we’re moving out on is to actually make sure that our managers are actually performing their work to those behaviors. That those core values are being reflected in the work that they do.

More broadly on the topic of safety culture, over the past few years there have been a number of reviews performed throughout the DOE complex—at headquarters and in the field—almost all of which found indications of problems to various degrees. Concerns over safety culture were even raised most recently in the investigation performed on the radiological release that occurred at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in February. So how would you, today, assess the safety culture throughout DOE? Is the Department where it needs to be? If not, what else is needed?

Podonsky: The Secretary and the Deputy Secretary signed out a joint memo last year which outlines their expectations for the Department. That was actually one of the first things that the Secretary signed out. So he’s really taking the lead on this and—I know this sounds cliché—taking this very seriously from all the reports that we have generated. As you mentioned, it does take time to turn the ship. But the most important part of turning that ship is having leadership recognizing there’s issues that need to be solved. Now, in the field itself overall, as well as at headquarters, there are actually pockets of excellence that are out there. That needs to catch fire across the Department, just as Matt is taking steps to continue on with the improvements in the former HSS and I’m doing with the IEA, the managers need to follow the secretary’s lead on this and take it seriously and put the improvement.

The litmus test will be when the workers feel that this is a reality in terms of leadership listening and hearing and taking their concerns to heart and making the changes that we’ve committed to.

When do you think you’ll get to that point for that litmus test?

Podonsky: If you were to talk to the organization that Matt is now managing or IEA, they will tell you that they’ve seen stark changes and improvements in communication and commitment in actions as opposed to just words. And if you go to some of the sites, you’ll see that there are things being taken care of right now. This is a very huge enterprise. You’re talking about a $30-billion corporation. And so my point is you’re seeing changes now. It’s a journey, it never stops. You can never declare victory on this. It has to be continuous through all the leaders and the change-out during the years that we have political change-out.