Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
9/19/2014
The Congressional advisory panel on the governance of the nuclear security enterprise is close to completing its work, co-chairman Norm Augustine said in a recent interview with NS&D Monitor, but it’s unclear when the report will be released. Speaking on the sidelines of a National Lab Day event Sept. 16, Augustine said it’s still being determined whether to release the report before or after the November elections. “That’s one thing that’s being debated right now and it’s kind of above our pay grade,” Augustine said. “The question obviously is we don’t want it to land on a lame duck Congress and we don’t want it to land in the middle of a terribly political environment such as just before an election, so I think we could, if it made sense, have it ready before the election. The question is, and it’s above my pay grade, is when does it make sense?”
Augustine said the 12-member panel has completed a final coordination draft, and that he and co-chair Richard Mies would review it in the next few days before sending it out to the members for approvals. He said he didn’t expect any major disagreements from the panel members, but declined to offer specifics about the panel’s recommendations. NS&D Monitor previously reported that the panel is preparing to call for the authority of the National Nuclear Security Administration to be strengthened within the Department of Energy as a potential fix for the agency’s woes.
Will the Panel be Bold Enough?
Congress, which convened the panel as a solution to disagreements between House and Senate authorizers over efforts to reform NNSA, has called on the panel to be “bold” in its recommendations, and Augustine said he felt the panel would be up to the task. The panel unveiled its initial findings earlier this year, calling the creation of the semi-autonomous NNSA a “failed experiment.” The panel’s final report was due July 1. “There is boldness to the extent of being grandstanding and irrational. We’ve tried to be responsibly bold,” he said. “I think anybody who reads it will probably say, ‘Boy, there are some very significant changes we’ve proposed.’ Did we come up with something anybody never thought of before? Probably not.”
Augustine said the group’s recommendations will come in three categories: specific fixes involving contracting and program management, cultural issues, and organizational questions. Augustine noted that Congress has emphasized the organizational questions. “We’ve said before that they’re not unimportant but they’re by far the least important in our opinion of the recommendations we’re going to make,” Augustine said. He said the recommendations involving cultural change at the agency were the “most difficult to deal with but often the most important.”
Panel Called Creation of NNSA ‘Failed Experiment’
The panel was clear in its criticism of NNSA when it unveiled its initial findings earlier this year, and the suggestion that the semi-autonomous agency was a “failed experiment” drew the attention of NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz. In comments this summer, Klotz said he “categorically rejects” the conclusion that the NNSA is a failed experiment, arguing that the agency has made significant strides in its Stockpile Stewardship and nonproliferation programs.
The NNSA has struggled in recent years to bring in major projects on time and on budget, and safety and security lapses that have sapped its credibility with Congress. During testimony before the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee earlier this year, Augustine and Mies did not hold back in criticizing the agency. Augustine said the agency “has lost credibility and the trust of the national leadership and customers in DoD that it can deliver weapons and critical nuclear facilities on schedule and on budget. Simply stated, there is no plan for success with available resources. NNSA is on a trajectory toward crisis unless strong leadership arrests the current course and reorients its governance to better focus on mission priorities and deliverables.”
