New political leaders at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) have tamped down on internal discord and improved the agency’s relationship with the Pentagon, but the Department of Energy weapons steward should appoint a senior executive to ensure progress does not end when those political leaders depart, the National Academies said in a new report.
NNSA Administator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, on the job for about a year as of February, “has worked toward healthier relationships with the Department of Defense (DoD) and with the rest of the Department of Energy,” according to the report published Friday, “Tracking and Assessing Governance and Management Reform in the Nuclear Security Enterprise.”
However, the “NNSA should quickly designate a senior executive as the accountable change management leader for the next few years,” the congressionally chartered group stated. “The change leader should drive management and governance reform with urgency and a cadence focused on mission success.” The report did not specify beyond that who might qualify for the role.
Congress in 2016 ordered the NNSA to reform its internal governance, citing the 2014 Augustine-Mies Panel report that expressed concern that the agency’s senior leadership had lost its focus on the nuclear-weapons mission, and that the NNSA bureaucracy and the contractors managing its national laboratories had a “dysfunctional” relationship.
Gordon-Hagerty got out ahead of the report last week in a webcast address from the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, during which she said the NNSA’s relationship with the Pentagon has never been stronger, and that she no longer distinguishes between the contractor and federal workforce.
