The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report this week the National Nuclear Security Administration “made progress” on 11 out of 19 prior recommendations by the congressional oversight agency for accurate cost reporting.
The GAO has issued four reports on financial reporting since fiscal 2019 for the DOE’s semi-autonomous agency in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, and made 28 recommendations in those reports. As of June 2023, GAO said 19 recommendations were still outstanding, and as of 2025, in an audit from July 2024 to July 2025, GAO found that two recommendations of the remaining 19 were fully implemented, nine were partially implemented, and eight had not been addressed.
“The National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA] pays contractors billions of dollars annually to run 8 sites where the agency maintains and modernizes U.S. nuclear weapons, among other things,” the report said. “Congress has had difficulty understanding the total cost of NNSA’s weapons programs because the contractors track and report costs in different ways. Without this information, Congress can’t make informed budgetary decisions or provide effective oversight.”
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017 required NNSA to implement “common financial reporting” by December 2020, the report said. Common financial reporting, according to the Act, should include: data reporting requirements using NNSA funds, including reporting financial data such as labor hours; a work breakdown structure that aligns contractor work breakdowns with NNSA’s budget structure; and definitions and methods for identifying and reporting costs.
The NNSA fully implemented the recommendation for the financial integration director to collect and document requirements for project objectives, and update requirements for implementing “enterprise-wide financial integration,” the report said. NNSA also implemented a requirement for the DOE chief financial officer to work with stakeholders, including NNSA and the Office of Science, in agreeing on indirect cost elements to be reported by contractors to the NNSA administrator.
NNSA has not implemented recommendations that include having the deputy associate administrator for Management and Budget define and communicate goals for using financial reporting data, GAO said.
NNSA is working, GAO said, on recommendations such as having the program director for financial integration collect information from management and operating contractors on recurring financial data requests. GAO said NNSA conducted information meetings with six contractors at five sites: Kansas City National Security Campus, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Nevada National Security Site, Sandia National Laboratories, and Savannah River.
GAO said it will continue to review NNSA’s efforts on the remaining 17 outstanding recommendations.