Buoyed by widespread weapons complex modernization efforts, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget is receiving unprecedented scrutiny, but a new report from the Government Accountability Office throws into question the credibility of the agency’s budget planning processes. In a report released yesterday, “Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise: NNSA’s Reviews of Budget Estimates and Decisions on Resource Trade-offs Need Strengthening,” the GAO said budget planning figures are not thoroughly reviewed by NNSA before its annual budget request is submitted to Congress, there is too much reliance on contractors to come up with budget data, and the agency does not have an independent group to review budget decisions after it disbanded its Office of Integration and Assessments in 2010. “Because of the fiscal constraints in the current budget environment, it is all the more critical that NNSA have the capability to conduct independent cost analyses to enhance its ability to make the most effective and efficient resource decisions on resource trade-offs,” the GAO said, noting that the Department of Energy’s Inspector General and the GAO had pushed the agency to establish an independent analytical capability to evaluation its programs. “Not having this capability could preclude NNSA from making the best decisions about what activities to fund and whether they are affordable,” GAO said.
The GAO also criticized the agency for not adhering to DOE regulations on budget planning, and for relying too heavily on contractor input on budget planning without enough reviews from federal staff. “Without thorough reviews by site and headquarters program offices of budget estimates, NNSA cannot have a high level of confidence in its budget estimates or in its ability to make informed decisions on resource trade-offs and to enhance the credibility and reliability of its budget,” the GAO said.
NNSA Associate Administrator for Management and Budget Cynthia Lersten said in a response to a draft of the GAO report that the agency acknowledged there were areas where it could improve its Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Evaluation (PPBE) process. But she took issue with some of the GAO’s conclusions and defended the agency’s budget planning approach, suggesting that the GAO unjustly focused on “procedural areas” while overlooking the “cumulative effectiveness” of the agency’s PPBE process. “NNSA has demonstrated a wide range of review activities including the formal budget validation (which are fully documented), as well as formal reviews by site and Headquarters organizations which are part of successive levels of review that go into validating NNSA’s budget submissions,” Lersten said.
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