Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
4/3/2015
The Department of Energy’s national laboratories are “choking” on a “proliferation of duplicative and burdensome” requirements, according to a Secretary of Energy Advisory Board task force on lab management, which recommended in a recently released interim report that the Department streamline administrative constraints on the labs. The task force said the “efficiency and operations” of the labs would be “greatly improved if there were greater clarity about how the authority, responsibility, and potential for liability” was more clearly defined across the six organizations with a role in managing the labs: headquarters, field offices, service centers, operational oversight offices, laboratory leadership, and management and operating contractors.
The SEAB task force also recommended that a Laboratory Policy Implementation Office be created for National Nuclear Security Administration and energy labs, mirroring the Office of Laboratory Policy that helps oversee Office of Science labs. The offices would “facilitate operations and associated operational efficiencies with each laboratory, and … expedite resolution of the numerous issues that regularly arise that impede program execution and unnecessarily increase costs,” the task force said. “The focus should be both on improving program outcomes and managing cost and risk.”
Problems Most Acute at NNSA Labs
The task force noted that issues at the national laboratories were most acute at the NNSA laboratories: Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore. “Unfortunately, over the past decade or so, budget pressures, unattended infrastructure needs, significant cost over-runs, and a massive increase of headquarters-applied regulations and oversight contributes to a situation—widely described as a breakdown in trust—between many laboratories and certain DOE programs,” the task force said. “While tension exists throughout the laboratory complex, the greatest feeling of dissatisfaction exists in the large NNSA weapons laboratories.”
The task force also recommended strengthening technology transfer activities and establishing an across-the-board Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding level of 6 percent of laboratory budgets. “This level would ensure that the laboratories retain adequate capacity to develop the next generation(s) of capabilities—including recruiting, retention, and development of scientists and engineers—that address national science, energy, and security needs,” the task force said.
The task force was chaired by SEAB Chairman John Deutch and included Steve Koonin, J. Michael McQuade, Arun Majumdar, Carmichael Roberts, Martha Schlicher, Ram Shenoy, Mike Anastasio, Jennifer Chayes, James Decker, John Gordon, Eric Isaacs, Bill Madia, Robert McGrath, Peter Ogden, and Joan Woodard. The task force is expected to issue a final report later this year.
