The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration should update its racial diversity guides for prime contractors to ensure leading practices are being used, the Government Accountability Office said in a report out Friday.

Also, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) May 2023 diversity report for management contractors generally provides workforce diversity data sought by the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

However, the agency report fails to explore why there was a smaller percentage increase in black or African American contractor employees from 2019 to 2022 than either their white counterparts or other minority populations, according to the GAO.

Black contractor employment rose 6.6% compared to a 9.5% rise in the number of white employees, the GAO report said. The percentage increase for other minority workers, including Native American, Asian American and Latino/Hispanic groups was up anywhere from 14.8 to 32.1%, according to GAO.

NNSA’s overall prime contractor headcount swelled to 59,400 in fiscal 2022 from 52,500 in fiscal 2019, according to the report. Almost 42,000 of the latest tally are white; Hispanic/Latino is the second largest group at almost 13,000 and blacks were third at 3,500.

NNSA’s diversity reporting and guidance do not yet follow three of nine of GAO’s leading practices on diversity management, GAO said. The report indicates NNSA is working on its shortcomings.

The workforce is spread across eight sites: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; the Nevada National Security Site; Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; the Pantex Plant in Texas; Kansas City National Security Campus in Kansas; the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.