Nuclear Security

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined the extent of property losses at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and assessed the adequacy of LLNL controls over government-owned property.

GAO found that: (1) LLNL could not account for or locate a substantial number of government-owned items in its custody; (2) an internal inventory determined that the missing property had an acquisition value of over $45 million; (3) LLNL had lost accountability over about 14 percent of certain high-value theft-prone items, worth about $2 million when acquired; and (4) despite the substantial number of missing items, the contract between DOE and the LLNL contractor protected the contractor against liability for such losses. GAO also found that: (1) LLNL property controls did not ensure that government-owned property was adequately safeguarded against theft, unauthorized use, or loss; (2) LLNL had no policies and procedures for controlling items with an acquisition cost below $1,000 and gathered no consistent data on those items, which made it difficult to identify how many items LLNL bought; (3) LLNL did not independently verify government-owned inventories of precious metals that were in the custody of subcontractors, making it difficult for LLNL to verify reported consumption of the metals; (4) DOE did not provide adequate oversight of the LLNL property management system and allowed the contractor to prescribe the terms of the contract; (5) DOE neither required LLNL to conform with DOE property management regulations nor approved the LLNL property management system; and (6) DOE did not develop or provide guidance to LLNL spelling out the criteria for performance of property management functions.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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