Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
3/27/2015
The National Nuclear Security Administration will deliver a report to Congress on its response to the recommendations of the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise in three-to-four weeks, NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee this week. The timeline represents a delay from previous statements by Klotz that suggested the report could be submitted to Congress last week. Klotz emphasized that the Department of Energy and NNSA agrees with many of the recommendations from the panel chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and former Strategic Command chief Adm. Richard Mies and has been working to strengthen program management and project management and shore up its relationship with the Department of Defense.
However, the NNSA hasn’t commented on how it views some of the panel’s most significant recommendations, including its call to move the semi-autonomous agency back under the control of the Department of Energy. It also called for the NNSA administrator to be given a fixed term and for the heads of the agency’s weapons and nonproliferation programs to be members of the Senior Executive Service rather than political appointees to help maintain continuity. It also recommended that the Secretary of Energy’s national security credentials be strengthened by requiring the Secretary to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee during the confirmation process. “Many of the things that they have suggested, for instance in the area of tightening up program management, instilling more rigor and discipline in project management, in cost estimation, in the relationship between NNSA and the military services and in the relationship NNSA and its laboratories and production plants across the country are things that, under Secretary [Ernest] Moniz’s leadership and under the leadership team that is currently now in place at NNSA, we have been working very, very hard on,” Klotz said.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, noted that many of the panel’s recommendations aligned with the subcommittee’s push to reduce transactional oversight, clarify roles and responsibilities and improve cost estimate in program management. “I agree with a lot of what the advisory panel recommended, but not all of it,” Rogers said. He implored Klotz to get to the bottom of the NNSA’s problems. “We have to get on top of these problems,” Rogers said. “If the NNSA is going to be successful in the long term, leadership and accountability will be a key to this.”
Klotz Promises Accountability
Klotz also assured Rogers that the NNSA was restoring “good order and discipline” to the agency after the lawmaker pressed him on whether officials would be held accountable for major failures, like the Y-12 security breach, Uranium Processing Facility design problems or “wasted effort” on the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility. “Can you assure this committee that you will hold both federal employees and contractors fully accountable for failures of this magnitude?” Rogers asked. “This committee would like to see a message sent.”
Klotz said the NNSA would not “shrink from holding either federal officials or the M&O contractors accountable for their performance, in both when they do well, to recognize that and to congratulate them, and … by the same token, when they fall short of our standards, to make sure that we communicate that to them.” He added: “I think a review of the most recent cycle of fee determinations shows that we will take tough action when what we expect from our people and our M&O contractors do not meet our expectations.” Notably, the NNSA zeroed out all but the Work For Others fee for Los Alamos National Laboratory contractor Los Alamos National Security, LLC, due to the lab’s part in the radiological release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant as well as the continuing shutdown of the lab’s Plutonium Facility.
