Department of Energy
NNSA Restructuring and Progress in Implementing Title 32 Gao ID: GAO-02-451T February 26, 2002Created to correct long-standing and widely recognized management and security problems at the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) manages the nation's nuclear weapons, nonproliferation, and naval reactors programs. Although NNSA announced a new headquarters organization in May 2001, it did not meet the Administrator's promise of implementing a new structure for the entire organization by October 2001. Furthermore, NNSA lost momentum during the summer in its effort to implement a comprehensive planning, programming, and budgeting process. NNSA has used only 19 of the 300 excepted service positions authorized by Title 32 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000. NNSA expects to report to Congress next month on its plans for using its excepted service authority. However, NNSA lacks a long-term strategic approach to ensure a well-managed, properly sized, and skilled workforce over the long run.
GAO-02-451T, Department of Energy: NNSA Restructuring and Progress in Implementing Title 32
This is the accessible text file for GAO report number GAO-02-451T
entitled 'Department Of Energy: NNSA Restructuring and Progress in
Implementing Title 32' which was released on February 26, 2002.
This text file was formatted by the U.S. General Accounting Office
(GAO) to be accessible to users with visual impairments, as part of a
longer term project to improve GAO products' accessibility. Every
attempt has been made to maintain the structural and data integrity of
the original printed product. Accessibility features, such as text
descriptions of tables, consecutively numbered footnotes placed at the
end of the file, and the text of agency comment letters, are provided
but may not exactly duplicate the presentation or format of the printed
version. The portable document format (PDF) file is an exact electronic
replica of the printed version. We welcome your feedback. Please E-mail
your comments regarding the contents or accessibility features of this
document to Webmaster@gao.gov.
This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright
protection in the United States. It may be reproduced and distributed
in its entirety without further permission from GAO. Because this work
may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the
copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this
material separately.
United States General Accounting Office:
GAO:
Testimony:
Before the Special Oversight Panel on Department of Energy
Reorganization, Armed Services Committee, House of Representatives:
For Release on Delivery:
Expected at 4:00 p.m.
Tuesday, February 26, 2002:
Department Of Energy:
NNSA Restructuring and Progress in Implementing Title 32:
Statement of (Ms.) Gary L. Jones, Director Natural Resources and
Environment:
GAO-02-451T:
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Special Panel:
We are pleased to be here today to provide our views on the progress
the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has made in
implementing Title 32 of the National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2000 (P.L. 106-65). As the Panel is well aware, Title 32
established NNSA as a semiautonomous agency within the Department of
Energy (DOE) with responsibility for the nation‘s nuclear weapons,
nonproliferation, and naval reactors programs. NNSA was created to
correct long-standing and widely recognized management and security
problems at DOE.
At the Panel‘s request, for over a year, we have monitored NNSA‘s
progress in implementing key components of Title 32. As you will
recall, when we testified before the Panel in April 2001,[Footnote 1]
we reported that NNSA was making progress in implementing changes to
its organization; improving its planning, programming, and budgeting
functions; and using its new personnel authority. At that time, we
noted that it might be several months before we saw tangible evidence
of these changes and that it might be several years before these
changes were fully implemented and could be definitively assessed.
More recently, in December 2001 we reported to the Panel again on
NNSA‘s progress in implementing Title 32.[Footnote 2] Overall, we found
that while NNSA had made additional progress on some fronts, on other
important fronts genuine change had been more difficult to achieve.
* While NNSA announced a new headquarters organization in May 2001, it
did not meet the Administrator‘s promise of implementing a new
structure for the entire organization by October 2001. Struggles within
NNSA over long-standing issues such as the roles and responsibilities
of headquarters and field staff delayed the announcement of a new
organization which was expected February 25, 2002. Moreover, what NNSA
announced represents only a framework for its eventual reorganization.
Currently, no plan with milestones for accomplishing the myriad of
details needed to implement NNSA‘s new organization exists. While we
are hopeful that resolution of long-standing organizational issues may
now be within NNSA‘s grasp, without the discipline of an implementation
plan, reaching NNSA‘s goals is likely to be a long and arduous process
that could take several years. Moreover, unless the new organization‘s
chains of command are enforced and federal and contractor staff are
truly held accountable, this reorganization could be simply another in
a long line of missed opportunities.
* NNSA lost some momentum over the summer in its effort to implement
the comprehensive planning, programming, and budgeting process
envisioned by the Administrator. Although it has now established a
conceptual planning, programming, and budgeting process, NNSA still has
an enormous amount of work to do as it tries to implement its new
process during the fiscal year 2004 budget cycle. Furthermore, it is
too soon to tell whether the proposed process, when fully implemented,
will effectively address widely recognized problems in NNSA‘s existing
planning, programming, and budgeting practices and will establish an
effective evaluation phase.
* While it has developed an overall excepted service personnel policy,
NNSA has used only 19 of the 300 excepted service positions authorized
by Title 32. NNSA expects to report to the Congress on its plans for
using its excepted service authority next month. However, NNSA does not
yet have a long-term strategic approach to ensure a well-managed,
properly sized and skilled workforce over the long run. Such a plan is
vital to effective implementation of NNSA‘s new organization.
We recognize that NNSA‘s implementation of Title 32 is an evolving
process. However, we believe the best time to address long-standing
problems is when the new organization and systems are first being laid
out and the momentum for change is at its highest. NNSA needs to move
forward aggressively so that this opportunity does not slip away and
old ways reemerge and harden. For NNSA to be ultimately successful in
correcting the long-standing management problems it inherited from DOE,
we believe it will need to jumpstart its efforts to implement its
proposed reorganization; regain momentum for implementing its revised
planning, programming, and budgeting process; and ensure a well-managed
workforce. After a brief overview of the factors that led to the
creation of NNSA, we will discuss each major management area in more
detail, including the underlying problems to be addressed, the status
of NNSA‘s progress, and the challenges that still lie ahead.
Background:
Since its creation in 1977, DOE has been responsible for developing,
producing, and maintaining nuclear weapons; preventing the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and designing, building,
and maintaining naval nuclear propulsion systems. However, DOE
historically has been plagued by organizational and managerial problems
that have resulted in significant cost overruns and schedule delays on
major projects, such as the National Ignition Facility. There have also
been a number of security concerns at DOE facilities. In response to
these problems, the Congress, in Title 32 of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, created a new semiautonomous
agency within DOE”the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Reflecting initial concerns about how DOE was planning to implement
Title 32, the Congress amended Title 32 in the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (P.L. 106-398) to require, among
other things, additional information on NNSA‘s organization, planning,
programming, and budgeting be supplied to the Congress.
As of October 2000, NNSA‘s basic organizational structure consisted of
three program offices”Defense Programs, Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation, and Naval Reactors; three operations offices”
Albuquerque, Nevada, and Oakland”that oversaw the operations of area
offices located at NNSA‘s eight field sites and numerous area offices.
All but two of the area offices reported to an operations office. The
other two area offices”Oak Ridge Y-12 and Savannah River Tritium
Operations” reported directly to NNSA headquarters. In May 2001, NNSA
restructured its headquarters operations and created two support
offices”the Office of Management and Administration and the Office of
Facilities and Infrastructure. However, the field structure remained
the same.
NNSA Has Taken Steps Toward Resolving Important Organizational Issues,
but Areas of Concern Remain:
The Congress established NNSA, in part, to correct the confused lines
of authority and responsibility within DOE‘s nuclear weapons complex
that had contributed to a wide variety of problems”such as cost
overruns and schedule slippage on large projects, like the National
Ignition Facility”as well as security lapses. Past advisory groups,
internal DOE studies, and GAO have reported over the years on DOE‘s
dysfunctional organizational structure. In particular, in December
2000, we reported on our comprehensive study of the management of the
Office of Defense Programs, which constitutes over 70 percent of NNSA.
[Footnote 3] We found that the Office of Defense Programs suffered from
organizational problems, such as a lack of clear roles and
responsibilities, at three levels: within its headquarters
organization, between headquarters and the field, and between
contractor-operated sites and their federal overseers. This situation
made it difficult for the program to be managed as an integrated whole
and for managers to make sound decisions.
While it did not specify exactly how NNSA was to be organized, Title 32
did establish certain NNSA positions, such as a general counsel, and
gave the Administrator the flexibility to determine the best
organizational structure for the new agency. Title 32 also laid out
chains of command in both DOE and NNSA intended to insulate NNSA from
DOE decision-making, except at the level of the NNSA Administrator. In
our April 2001 testimony, we reported that some progress had been made
in establishing a better-organized NNSA. We noted that the practice of
’dual-hatting“ had been virtually eliminated, enabling NNSA to manage
its programs more independently.[Footnote 4] In addition, we noted that
NNSA had established a new support structure in its headquarters office
that had as its goals establishing clear and direct lines of
communication, clarifying the roles and responsibilities of NNSA‘s
headquarters and field offices, and integrating and balancing
priorities across NNSA‘s missions and infrastructure. Specifically,
NNSA established two headquarters support offices: one headed by an
associate administrator for management and administration, who is
responsible for the planning, programming, and budgeting; personnel;
and procurement areas, and the other headed by an associate
administrator for facilities and operations, who is responsible for
managing NNSA‘s infrastructure revitalization initiative and security
functions.
As we noted in our December 2001 report to the Panel, despite these
initiatives, fundamental organizational issues remained. Specifically,
the details on how the new NNSA headquarters support offices would work
with the established headquarters program offices”the Office of Defense
Programs and the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation”were
unclear.[Footnote 5] Many of the field managers we spoke with while
developing our 2001 report were concerned that reporting relationships
could become more complex and confused rather than less because these
various headquarters offices could have different expectations. For
example, depending on how responsibility was divided, it was possible
for field offices to receive direction from multiple headquarters
offices on such areas as infrastructure and major construction
projects. More importantly, long-standing, fundamental issues regarding
confused lines of authority within NNSA‘s headquarters organization,
between headquarters and the field, and between contractor-operated
sites and their federal overseers that directly affect how NNSA‘s
contractors are managed remained unresolved. Direction and guidance to
the NNSA contractors was still being provided from multiple sources:
NNSA local area office managers, DOE and NNSA operations office
managers, and NNSA headquarters managers. As we have found in the past,
when its contractors receive multiple and sometimes conflicting
guidance, NNSA‘s ability to hold them accountable for performance is
undermined. As it attempted to address these organizational issues, we
urged NNSA to employ the organizational principles cited in our April
2001 testimony before this Panel: focusing a small headquarters staff
on strategic management, policy, and relationships with other federal
agencies; moving program management officials as close to the action as
possible; establishing clear lines of authority between NNSA and its
contractors; and holding federal and contractor employees accountable
for meeting mission goals.
While the Administrator promised a solution to these problems by
October 2001, NNSA‘s report to the Congress on the organization and
operations of the NNSA was not expected until February 25, 2002. Our
preliminary analysis of NNSA‘s proposal leads us to conclude that it
contains some positive features as well as some important weaknesses.
Most fundamentally, NNSA‘s proposal represents only an overall plan of
action, and ironing out the details and implementing the proposed new
structure is likely to be a long and arduous process.
On the positive side, NNSA‘s proposal has outlined some potentially
significant steps toward solving important long-standing organizational
issues by employing some of the principles cited above. Specifically,
NNSA‘s proposal:
* Clarifies the relationship between the headquarters program offices
and the headquarters support offices by establishing that program
direction will come exclusively from the program offices”the Office of
Defense Programs and the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation”and
by reducing the role of the Office of Facilities and Operations to
focus on the infrastructure revitalization initiative and support
functions such as security.
* Establishes a framework for resolving the so-called ’two
headquarters“ problem of duplicative roles between the Office of
Defense Programs and the Albuquerque Operations Office by placing
program direction for weapons production”a traditional function of the
Albuquerque Operations Office”under the Office of Defense Programs.
* Establishes clear lines of authority between NNSA and its contractors
by making the manager of each site office (formerly called an area
office) the contracting officer for that site and by providing that
direction to the contractor can only come from the contracting officer
or a formally appointed representative. In addition, all of the site
office managers will report to the Administrator through the Principal
Deputy rather than the current practice of some reporting through
operations offices and others reporting directly to headquarters.
* Removes a management layer by making existing operations offices into
so-called ’Centers of Excellence“ that will provide support functions
such as financial management and security clearance processing for all
of NNSA.
* Promises to streamline federal staff and to hold federal staff and
contractors more accountable for performing NNSA‘s mission.
Despite these potential improvements, important areas of concern
remain.
* NNSA‘s proposal does not address the fact that the weapons science
function and the weapons production function within the Office of
Defense Programs are managed separately, although their work must be
coordinated to achieve mission goals. As we noted in our December 2000
report, officials in DOE‘s headquarters, field offices, labs, and
production plants repeatedly told us of numerous ways that the split
between the weapons science and weapons production portions of the
Stockpile Stewardship Program at the headquarters level negatively
affects coordination within the nuclear weapons complex.
* NNSA‘s proposal does not consistently apply the principles of
streamlining headquarters staff and moving federal program management
officials as close to the action as possible. While NNSA expects the
weapons production work to be managed by experts in the field, NNSA
continues the pattern of having the weapons science work managed out of
headquarters. This is problematic because, as we noted in our report on
the National Ignition Facility, inadequate oversight by headquarters
managers contributed to the cost and schedule problems experienced at
this facility.[Footnote 6]
* Finally, many important documents will need to be created and refined
before the changes proposed in NNSA‘s report can become truly
operational. This is no small task. For example, the report notes that
one document that will need revision is a May 1968 memorandum that
defines the roles and responsibilities of the Office of Defense
Programs and the Albuquerque Operations Office. As we noted in our
December 2000 report on the management of the Office of Defense
Programs, there have been several attempts to revise this relationship
over the years, none of them successful. Moreover, some of the
proposals, such as the Centers of Excellence, are merely concepts that
need to be further defined. In addition, streamlining the federal
workforce is a difficult undertaking that will take a significant
amount of time to fully implement. Currently, no plan with milestones
exists for refining these concepts and accomplishing the myriad of
details needed to implement them.
While we are hopeful that resolution of such long-standing issues may
now be within NNSA‘s grasp, without the discipline of an implementation
plan, reaching NNSA‘s organizational goals is likely to be a long and
arduous process that could take several years. Moreover, unless the new
chains of command are enforced and federal and contractor staff are
truly held accountable, this reorganization could be simply another in
a long line of missed opportunities.
Significant Effort Still Required to Develop an Effective Planning,
Programming, and Budgeting Process:
Numerous studies have identified problems in DOE‘s planning,
programming, and budgeting, including the lack of a unified planning
and programming process, the absence of integrated long-range program
plans, and the failure to fully link existing plans to budgets and
management controls. Without sound, integrated planning, programming,
and budgeting, it has been difficult for officials to ensure that
decisions with resource implications are weighed against one another in
a complete and consistent fashion and that mission outcomes are linked
to management controls. In our December 2000 report, we recommended
that NNSA take action to improve and integrate its planning processes
and to improve its budgetary data to provide needed management
information.
Title 32 mandates the use of sound planning, programming, budgeting,
and financial activities. It also requires that NNSA submit to the
Congress each year a Future Years Nuclear Security Program plan that
details NNSA‘s planned expenditures for the next 5 years. Very early in
his tenure, the current NNSA Administrator indicated that he intended
to comply with Title 32 by instituting a planning, programming, and
budgeting process similar to that in use at the Department of Defense
(DOD). While DOD‘s approach has not been without problems over the past
40 years, it is generally recognized as a system that, when properly
led and staffed, is capable of making cost-effectiveness comparisons
and of developing the detailed program and budget plans called for in
Title 32. The Administrator originally set a goal of having fully
established NNSA‘s version of DOD‘s planning, programming, and
budgeting process”now referred to as the planning, programming,
budgeting, and evaluation (PPBE) process”by the fiscal year 2003 budget
cycle. Subsequently, this date was pushed back to the fiscal year 2004
budget cycle because development was taking longer than expected.
In our April 2001 testimony before the Panel, we reported that despite
the delays NNSA was encountering, its initial attempts to develop its
own PPBE process offered the potential to help bring NNSA into
compliance with Title 32. It appeared that both NNSA headquarters and
field units appreciated the discipline that such a process could offer.
We noted, however, that an enormous amount of work would have to be
completed before NNSA had even a minimally functional PPBE process.
As we reported to the Panel in December 2001, beginning in the summer
of 2001, the acting associate administrator of the Office of Management
and Administration and the acting director of the Office of Planning,
Programming, Budgeting, and Evaluation, began reevaluating NNSA‘s
initial efforts. This shift in direction temporarily slowed NNSA‘s
momentum in establishing a PPBE process and caused some confusion in
NNSA field offices. These officials began the reevaluation because they
believed that the initial approach was oriented too much toward DOD‘s
program structure and that this approach failed to take into account
the uniqueness of NNSA‘s programs and the type of contracting
approaches NNSA uses to do its work. As a result, NNSA proposed a PPBE
process that would use existing NNSA plans, practices, and processes as
much as possible.
Nevertheless, NNSA continued to refine its PPBE process and
communicated it to all NNSA program, support, and field offices on
September 12, 2001. Later, NNSA began to implement some of the planning
elements of the process for the fiscal year 2004 budget cycle. Examples
of some of these activities follow:
* NNSA released draft strategic guidance developed by its Office of
Policy Planning on September 27, 2001. This long-range guidance focuses
on the key issues NNSA faces, such as the projected security
environment and size of the stockpile, and is intended to guide the
planning process. According to NNSA, the first step in its revised PPBE
process, the draft strategic guidance, will establish a basis for the
development of 5-year program plans for the individual programs within
NNSA.
* NNSA‘s major programs”Defense Programs, Defense Nuclear
Nonproliferation, and Naval Reactors”and each of NNSA‘s headquarters
support offices have drafted program integrated plans. These plans are
annual documents that delineate the responsibilities, priorities, and
performance commitments for an entire program.
Despite this progress, NNSA did not complete all the goals it set for
its PPBE planning phase for the fiscal year 2004 cycle. For example,
NNSA did not issue draft 5-year program and fiscal guidance or its
strategic plan in September 2001 as it had originally envisioned. These
documents will probably be issued in late February 2002. NNSA officials
cited the far-reaching impact of the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks; delays in the fiscal year 2002 appropriations process; and the
then-ongoing national security program review as reasons for the delay
in issuing both documents. Nevertheless, both the draft program and
fiscal guidance and the strategic plan are important early components
of the ’cascade“ of NNSA planning documents that were to be used to
shape the program integrated plans mentioned earlier.
While NNSA did make some progress in implementing elements of its
fiscal year 2004 planning phase, NNSA still has an enormous amount of
work to do for the programming, budgeting, and evaluation phases of the
fiscal year 2004 budget cycle. Examples of the implementation
activities remaining follow:
* NNSA has not finalized significant portions of the PPBE process, such
as the programming and evaluation phases. NNSA established
implementation teams to help create workable processes for those two
phases of its PPBE process. One of the teams has focused on the
programming phase, in which competing priorities and mission needs will
be evaluated, alternatives and trade-offs will be analyzed, and
resources will be allocated to meet the highest priorities. The other
team is working on an enhanced evaluation phase, which will establish
performance measures, indicators, and metrics to evaluate progress in
meeting programmatic goals. Both teams were scheduled to develop
recommendations and report to the NNSA senior leadership in December
2001; however, these reports now have been delayed until late February
2002. The initiation of the programming phase has slipped from February
to March 2002.
* NNSA has begun to work on an automated system for the budget
execution phase of the PPBE process, but other decision and information
systems will still need to be revised to handle the new process. In
addition, NNSA‘s systems will have to interface with both DOE‘s
existing planning, financial, and budgeting systems and DOE‘s planned
changes to these systems. NNSA and DOE officials report that they are
cooperating on these issues. However, NNSA officials report that
coordinating with the DOE Chief Financial Officer is causing some
delays in implementing NNSA‘s PPBE process.
* Except for budgeting, NNSA does not appear to have many personnel on
hand with the skills to conduct the analytical functions typically
associated with multiple phases of a PPBE process. These skills, which
were the trademark of DOD‘s system when it was implemented 40 years
ago, are especially important in the upcoming programming phase where
program alternatives and trade-offs are considered and cost-
effectiveness comparisons are made. NNSA officials report that such
factors as their recent hiring freeze have prevented them from
recruiting these kinds of analysts.
* It is unclear if NNSA will submit a comprehensive Future Years
Nuclear Security Program plan to the Congress as required by Title 32.
Although NNSA previously had developed such plans, NNSA failed to
submit these plans to the Congress in 2000 and 2001. NNSA did include a
table containing the 5 years of budget data required for a Future Years
Nuclear Security Program plan in its fiscal year 2003 budget request,
and some NNSA officials have told us that a broad plan has been
prepared and may be released by the end of February 2002. All the plans
to date have been developed without the benefit of a functional PPBE.
In summary, NNSA has experienced difficulty in fully implementing all
the activities it had envisioned for the planning phase of its PPBE
process. The need to implement the new programming phase, establish a
more highly automated budget execution phase, and upgrade evaluation
activities suggest that NNSA probably will face additional hurdles as
it implements its PPBE process for the fiscal year 2004 budget cycle.
Rather than the fully implemented system for the fiscal year 2004 cycle
envisioned by the Administrator, it is probably better to think of
NNSA‘s PPBE as a prototype that will have to be more extensively
refined and developed in future years. Furthermore, it is too soon to
tell whether the proposed process, when fully implemented, will
effectively address widely recognized problems in NNSA‘s existing
planning, programming, and budgeting practices and will establish an
effective evaluation process.
NNSA Has Made Limited Progress in Implementing Its Excepted Service
Authority:
Retaining and recruiting the highly skilled scientific and technical
personnel needed to make our government run efficiently and effectively
challenges virtually every federal department and agency. NNSA, in
particular NNSA‘s Office of Defense Programs, has had difficulty
meeting this challenge. According to NNSA officials, specific obstacles
to recruiting and retaining staff include the downsizing and resulting
program instability of the past decade, the high cost of living near
some NNSA field sites or their remote locations, a shortage of people
trained in the relevant scientific and engineering disciplines,
relatively low federal salaries compared with those offered by private
high-technology companies, and the lengthy process required to hire
people into the federal workforce. Moreover, we and others have
concluded that the lack of technically competent personnel has
contributed to weak contract management and to poorly managed projects
that are often late or over budget.
In response to this situation, in Title 32 the Congress provided NNSA
the authority to create up to 300 excepted service positions
specifically for scientific, engineering, and technical staff. For
excepted service positions, each agency”in this case NNSA”develops,
within basic requirements prescribed by law or regulation, its own
hiring system. NNSA‘s system establishes the evaluation criteria NNSA
will use in filling the excepted service positions. Specifically, NNSA
may now hire staff through a noncompetitive selection process and has
greater flexibility in setting salaries.
NNSA managers and human resource officials with whom we spoke had mixed
reactions to the excepted service authority granted by Title 32. In
general, NNSA officials were optimistic that the excepted service
authority would help make the agency more attractive to prospective
employees. NNSA currently employs about 2,500 people, including more
than 800 in scientific, engineering, and technical job series. Several
managers told us that additional pay flexibility would allow them to be
competitive in their efforts to hire new employees and to retain
current employees. However, managers also cautioned that the limited
authority might create morale problems for those NNSA employees not
included in the excepted service.
In light of these concerns, NNSA managers told us that they would
prefer to have the entire agency in the excepted service, or at least
enough positions for all of the organization‘s scientific, engineering,
and technical employees. Accordingly, NNSA pursued congressional
authorization to expand the excepted service authority granted in Title
32; however, the Congress has not granted this authorization. At the
same time, NNSA made an initial allocation of about one-third of the
300 excepted service positions provided by Title 32 to the field and
headquarters units in October 2001. At that time, NNSA had plans to use
68 positions to convert employees in DOE‘s excepted service and NNSA
civil service to NNSA‘s excepted service and to use the other 29
positions to hire new staff. In the interim, NNSA‘s human resource
officials had been reluctant to use the limited authority and decided
to use it only to hire critical new staff. Subsequently, NNSA imposed a
hiring freeze starting in October 2001 that will remain in effect for
the foreseeable future.
As we noted in our December 2001 report to the Panel, NNSA has made
limited progress toward using its new authority. The Administrator has
developed an interim excepted service policy that covers new staff and
NNSA employees originally hired into DOE‘s excepted service systems who
will be converted to NNSA‘s system. The Administrator has also
delegated the authority to implement the policy to headquarters and
field organizations. In addition, the Administrator created an NNSA
Executive Resources Board and appointed its members. The Board is
responsible for making hiring and promotion decisions affecting NNSA
employees assigned to the two highest levels of the excepted service,
as well as to the Senior Executive Service, Scientific and
Professional, and Senior Level pay systems.
According to NNSA‘s deputy for workforce planning and management, NNSA
has also prepared the policies needed to cover civil service employees
who might consider making the conversion to excepted service. Those
policies are awaiting final approval from the Administrator and DOE. In
addition, in response to congressional direction, NNSA is preparing a
plan for using the remainder of the 300 authorized excepted service
positions. Because of the hiring freeze, the excepted service positions
will be used primarily to offer existing eligible employees the
opportunity to convert to the excepted service. Thus, NNSA expects that
most of the 300 positions will be filled within 90 days of the
Administrator‘s final approval of the policies and plan by converting
existing employees.
A more fundamental obstacle to full use of the excepted service
authority is that NNSA does not have a long-term strategic approach to
ensure a well-managed workforce. We have reported in the past that
agencies need to create a coherent agencywide human capital
strategy”that is, a framework of human capital policies, programs, and
practices specifically designed to steer the agency toward achieving
its vision.[Footnote 7] Such a workforce planning strategy needs to be
linked to the agency‘s strategic and program planning efforts and
should identify the agency‘s current and future human capital needs,
including the size of the workforce; its deployment across the
organization; and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for the
agency to pursue its vision.
According to the deputy for workforce planning and management, NNSA
plans to develop a comprehensive workforce strategy, the timing of
which depends on the implementation of NNSA‘s reorganization and
streamlining plans. NNSA‘s recent decisions concerning organizational
structure, lines of authority, and roles and responsibilities will
affect the agency‘s human resource needs by determining what skills are
needed, how many employees are necessary, and where they should be
located in the newly restructured headquarters and field offices. These
decisions are key to developing a comprehensive strategy that steers
NNSA toward achieving its vision, is linked to strategic program
planning efforts, and identifies the agency‘s current and future
personnel needs.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I would be happy to respond
to any questions you or Members of the Special Panel may have.
GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgements:
For further information on this testimony, please call Ms. Gary L.
Jones at (202)512-3841. James Noel, Jonathan Gill, Ross Campbell,
Andrea Riba, and Delores Parrett also made key contributions to this
testimony.
[End of section]
Footnotes:
[1] U.S. General Accounting Office, Department of Energy: Views on the
Progress of the National Nuclear Security Administration in
Implementing Title 32, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-01-602T] (Washington, D.C.: April
2001).
[2] U.S. General Accounting Office, NNSA Management: Progress in the
Implementation of Title 32, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-02-93R] (Washington, D.C.: December
2001).
[3] U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Weapons: Improved
Management Needed to Implement Stockpile Stewardship Program
Effectively, [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-01-48]
(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 14, 2000).
[4] Initially, the then-Secretary of Energy chose to fill numerous key
NNSA positions with DOE officials ” thus, these officials had both DOE
and NNSA responsibilities and were dubbed ’dual-hatted.“ This practice
caused considerable concern on this Panel and with others, including
GAO, that NNSA might not be able to function with the independence
envisioned when NNSA was created.
[5] The Office of Naval Reactors continues to be managed as a separate
entity within NNSA.
[6] U.S. General Accounting Office, National Ignition Facility:
Management and Oversight Failures Caused Major Cost Overruns and
Schedule Delays, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/RCED-00-141] (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 8,
2000).
[7] U.S. General Accounting Office, Human Capital: A Self-Assessment
Checklist for Agency Leaders, [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO/OCG-00-14G] (Washington, D.C.: Sept.
2000).
[End of section]
GAO‘s Mission:
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress,
exists to support Congress in meeting its constitutional
responsibilities and to help improve the performance and accountability
of the federal government for the American people. GAO examines the use
of public funds; evaluates federal programs and policies; and provides
analyses, recommendations, and other assistance to help Congress make
informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions. GAO‘s commitment to
good government is reflected in its core values of accountability,
integrity, and reliability.
Obtaining Copies of GAO Reports and Testimony:
The fastest and easiest way to obtain copies of GAO documents at no
cost is through the Internet. GAO‘s Web site [hyperlink,
http://www.gao.gov] contains abstracts and full text files of current
reports and testimony and an expanding archive of older products. The
Web site features a search engine to help you locate documents using
key words and phrases. You can print these documents in their entirety,
including charts and other graphics.
Each day, GAO issues a list of newly released reports, testimony, and
correspondence. GAO posts this list, known as ’Today‘s Reports,“ on its
Web site daily. The list contains links to the full-text document
files. To have GAO e-mail this list to you every afternoon, go to
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov] and select ’Subscribe to daily E-mail
alert for newly released products“ under the GAO Reports heading.
Order by Mail or Phone:
The first copy of each printed report is free. Additional copies are $2
each. A check or money order should be made out to the Superintendent
of Documents. GAO also accepts VISA and Mastercard. Orders for 100 or
more copies mailed to a single address are discounted 25 percent.
Orders should be sent to:
U.S. General Accounting Office:
441 G Street NW, Room LM:
Washington, D.C. 20548:
To order by Phone:
Voice: (202) 512-6000:
TDD: (202) 512-2537:
Fax: (202) 512-6061:
To Report Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Federal Programs Contact:
Web site: [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm]:
E-mail: fraudnet@gao.gov:
Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202) 512-7470:
Public Affairs:
Jeff Nelligan, managing director, NelliganJ@gao.gov:
(202) 512-4800:
U.S. General Accounting Office:
441 G Street NW, Room 7149:
Washington, D.C. 20548:
