WHITE HOUSE REQUESTS STUDY OF NATIONAL LAB GOVERNANCE

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has tasked the Institute for Defense Analyses’ Science and Technology Policy Institute to study governance of the nation’s federal laboratories, and former Under Secretary of Energy for Science Steve Koonin will head up the review effort, NW&M Monitor has learned. The study is expected to examine whether the governance structures in place at the laboratories—including the government-owned, contractor-operated model in place at Department of Energy/NNSA labs—is appropriate to meet national security challenges into the future. OSTP and Koonin did not respond to requests for comment, but Koonin is expected to hold invitation-only information-gathering sessions over the next month to aid in the review.

 

In a recent study of the NNSA’s nuclear weapons laboratories, the National Academy of Sciences called the agency’s relationship with its labs “dysfunctional” and “broken.” Koonin was notably outspoken about the state of the science at the NNSA’s weapons laboratories during the NAS study, suggesting that the switch to private management of the labs had taken its toll on science. “It’s been a challenge to maintain a vibrant scientific enterprise,” Koonin said at the time. “That’s not to say there isn’t some great stuff going on, but if you look at the totality of the effort, I don’t think it matches what we had decades ago in the basic research area.” Koonin left the Department in the fall for a post at IDA.