Kenneth Fletcher and Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
9/19/2014
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has given more autonomy to national laboratories from headquarters on management and budget decisions, a DOE official this week told a panel tasked with reviewing the labs. The Congressionally-mandated Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories pressed DOE officials at a meeting in Alexandria, Va., Sept. 15 on improvements being implemented at the labs. Office of Science Deputy Director for Science Programs Patricia Dehmer told the panel: “We are moving toward funding the laboratories with larger lots of money in order to give the laboratory management the flexibility to make decisions. At headquarters we should not be managing on the post-doc level. And you will anecdotal hear stories of managing at half the post-doc level, and it happens, but we are trying to move away from it.”
National Nuclear Security Administration officials said they are focusing on strengthening communication and collaboration with the labs and contractors. “From our perspective, really developing and viewing the relationship, regardless of the legal framework, as a partnership is essential,” NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Anne Harrington told the panel. She added: “The [Federally Funded Research and Development Center] concept here is absolutely essential to making this work in the long term, because if you can’t regard each other as partners and as co-contributors to every step of the process, starting with strategic vision on through, then ultimately the relationship will break down. We’ve seen some of that and are now in a very serious rebuilding mode.”
The panel will meet monthly, with its next meeting scheduled for Oct. 6, and it is expecting to issue its phase one report to Congress in early February, panel co-chairman and former Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier said at the meeting. Members of the panel will also visit five laboratories in the coming months, making trips to Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne, Fermilab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
NNSA: Cooperation Should be Expanded
Previous studies have called the relationship between the NNSA and its laboratories “broken,” and fixing that relationship has been a priority at the agency. Harrington said there is cooperation among federal officials and the labs in certain areas, but she said that needed to be expanded. “We in our areas tend to work very collaboratively with the laboratories when we send a team out to look at a project that we are going to undertake, whether it’s physical security, material protection,” she said. “It’s federal and lab staff shoulder to shoulder as one. … It’s that sense of collaboration that we need to feed across everything.”
When questioned by panel member Richard Meserve on the barriers to that cooperation, Kathleen Alexander, NNSA Assistant Deputy Administrator for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, said communication is essential. “That’s why it’s important to get up and talk and align the team with field offices, headquarters and laboratories,” she said. “A lot of the challenge there was to make sure that everyone saw each other’s perspective. You didn’t have to agree with it, but you had to see each other’s perspective so you have that common understanding and then you could find the elements that you all agreed on.”
