Nuclear Security

Property Control Problems at DOE's Livermore Laboratory Continue Gao ID: RCED-91-141 May 16, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) claim that it found approximately 99 percent of the inventory it previously reported as missing, focusing on: (1) the accuracy of LLNL claims; (2) whether controls over government-owned property at the laboratory were strengthened; and (3) the adequacy of DOE property control oversight.

GAO found that: (1) the LLNL claim was inaccurate, since it excluded missing non-capital equipment purchased prior to 1985 from its analysis and it used a different basis than GAO did for calculating and reporting missing item percentages; (2) taking the differences into consideration, LLNL actually located only 3 percent of the inventoried equipment, acquired at a cost of $26.8 million, and 13 percent of the inventoried equipment, acquired at a cost of $18.6 million, remained missing; (3) the LLNL property management policy manual lacked property accountability controls over all non-capital equipment; (4) DOE oversight of changes in laboratory property controls was inadequate; and (5) the DOE San Francisco Operations Office approved the LLNL property management policy manual without ensuring that it complied with federal and departmental regulations.

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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