While it has made progress, the Department of Energy still needs to more fully address priority recommendations to improve performance in its nuclear security and cleanup missions, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Wednesday.
In an annual update, the congressional auditor said it has 20 priority recommendations across the Energy Department, including eight recommendations new to this report.
The 20 uncompleted priorities are divided into seven groups, and include six that apply either to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management or semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The six issues address management of projects or programs, contract oversight, financial information, modernization of the nuclear stockpile, cybersecurity, and reducing environmental liability,
These are areas in which the Energy Department has yet to fully implement priority recommendations from prior reports. The federal watchdog deems such items a priority because they could generate cost savings, reduce chances of fraud or mismanagement, or expedite progress toward important public goals.
The GAO status update notes the Energy Department remains responsible for most of the federal government’s environmental liability, $505 billion of $595 billion in fiscal 2019.
The agency wants DOE Environmental Management to make its remediation planning and decisions more risk-based — in part by comparing risks posed by radiological and chemical contamination from site to site in order to gain a more national perspective of hazards. The Office of Environmental Management currently relies mostly on offices at the 16 cleanup locations to set priorities and negotiate remediation plans with stakeholders. This is an unimplemented priority item left over from a May 2017 report.
The DOE nuclear cleanup office expects to issue a new project management policy this spring and a new program management policy this fall, both in response to February 2019 recommendations from the GAO. Together the updated policies should help Environmental Management embrace “leading practices” and reduce risks stemming from unexpected changes to scope, costs, or schedule for its work, according to this week’s report.
The National Nuclear Security Administration still needs to improve oversight of management and operations vendors by making better use of “contractor assurance management” in performance evaluations, the GAO said, alluding to the electronic system for tracking performance.
While the NNSA said it agrees with the recommendations outlined in a May 2015 GAO report, it has not fully implemented much more than a “general framework” for the improvements, according to this week’s update.
The Energy Department also needs to strengthen whistleblower protections to ensure employees can report workplace safety concerns without fear of reprisals. The department has yet to spell out how vendors might be held accountable for a “chilled work environment” at NNSA and Environmental Management operations, according to the GAO. The auditor called for stronger whistleblower protections at DOE in a July 2016 report.
In its update, the GAO praised an NNSA policy rolled out in February 2019 to improve program management and independent cost estimates of its projects. The measures satisfied the watchdog’s recommendations from November 2014. The latest document did not detail how the policy change accomplished this goal.
In addition, the GAO said the Office of Environmental Management revamped the structure of the Office of River Protection for the Hanford Site in Washington state to assure better project oversight for Bechtel’s construction of the Waste Treatment Plant. The office completed the change in September 2019 to satisfy a GAO recommendation from April 2018 that ORP’s quality assurance personnel be given more independence from upper management at Hanford.
The Energy Department is slightly above average among federal agencies when it comes to implementing GAO recommendations. Government-wide, agencies have implemented 77% of GAO recommendations made in the prior four years, according to November 2019 figures. The DOE implementation rate is about 78%, according to the status update.
