NNSA DP CHIEF PROVIDES HEALTHY ASSESSMENT OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AT LABS

The National Nuclear Security Administration may have its share of governance issues, but they’re not affecting the quality of science and engineering at the agency’s laboratories, according to Defense Programs chief Don Cook. Speaking yesterday on the sidelines of a public meeting of a National Academy of Sciences panel examining the quality of science and engineering at the labs, Cook said he was generally pleased with the work coming out of the labs and noted that the institutions had largely been able to overcome what has been described as burdensome and overly prescriptive directives and regulations. “I really am quite pleased with the quality of science and engineering I’ve seen in so many different ways,” Cook told NW&M Monitor. “Good people do good work if you don’t mess with them.” A previous NAS report helmed by the same chairs of the current study—Charles Shank and Kumar Patel—suggested that the relationship between the NNSA and its laboratories was “broken” and “dysfunctional,” and some lawmakers have said the governance issues have infringed on the agency’s ability to perform its mission. But Cook suggested that most of the criticism of the agency has been centered on oversight. “You usually don’t hear comments that NNSA is trying to tell the labs what to do in detail,” he said. “Usually the criticism is NNSA has too many constraints or too many budget reporting codes, or something else. But there isn’t usually a concern that we’re micromanaging the details of the science and engineering effort. If there is a concern we’ll hear about it in the future but so far it’s more a sense of if we adjust our oversight to get it better then we’d improve.”