The National Nuclear Security Administration is seeking greater federal staffing levels in its fiscal 2018 budget request and remains concerned about recruiting talent to its sites across the United States, agency Administrator Frank Klotz said Wednesday.
The request for the budget year starting Oct. 1 grants $418.6 million for NNSA’s federal salaries and expenses, which is $31.5 million, or 8 percent, over the level enacted under the current omnibus appropriations spending bill. This would provide funding for 1,715 direct civilian full-time equivalent employees – 25 more than the currently authorized 1,690 employees.
“Since 2010, NNSA’s program funding has increased 28%, while staffing has decreased 17%,” Klotz said in a written statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The NNSA’s former principal deputy administrator, Madelyn Creedon, said earlier this year that the congressionally mandated cap of 1,690 federal employees could hinder the agency’s work. She recommended increasing the cap by 100 employees to properly manage the NNSA’s programs.
Meanwhile, recruitment and retention of technical talent at NNSA labs remains an ongoing concern; Klotz said on Capitol Hill that the current backlog at the agency’s facilities in processing security clearances for new hires is an “enormous impediment” to recruitment.
“I’m sad to report that it’s not getting any faster in terms of the normal processing of security clearances,” he told lawmakers, adding that to address the issue the NNSA grants interim clearances to some eligible employees and assigns some new hires to unclassified projects while their clearances are being processed.
The labs’ laboratory-directed research and development (LDRD) programs often fund such unclassified projects and are therefore seen as critical components in recruiting technical talent. Klotz noted that LDRD involves not only basic science research, but also “has resulted in some fairly important scientific and engineering outcomes which do have some direct correlation to the work that we do, either in the nuclear weapons enterprise or for the other customers that the labs have.”
The agency’s budget request includes an additional $1 billion over current funding levels, most of which would go toward its weapons activities – specifically the warhead life-extension programs and investments recapitalization of weapons complex infrastructure.
