Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
2/28/2014
Expanding on previous comments about a “public interest” model for managing the nation’s national laboratories, acting National Nuclear Security Administration chief Bruce Held said this week that the agency need to move toward a “more agile” governance relationship between the labs and its federal overseers. Speaking at the Energy Communities Alliance meeting in Washington, D.C., this week, Held acknowledged that the adversarial relationship that has developed between the labs and NNSA in recent years has been stifling to the labs. “The adversarial relationship that’s kind of developed over the last decade between feds and contractors actually is not helpful,” Held said. “It is not helpful for the mission. It is not helpful for the cause.”
With the NNSA facing heavy scrutiny due to cost overruns, security lapses and delays on major projects, Congress has grown more and more interested in revising the governance structure of the agency, and a Congressionally created panel was formed last year to make recommendations on revising the governance structure of the agency. Held emphasized that a “more agile” governance structure was needed to allow the labs to take on “really, really hard challenges that are very high-risk” and not be encumbered by bureaucracy or overly burdensome regulations. “We need to change the governance structure in a way … that has enough structure that I can certify to Congressman [Mike] Simpson [the chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee] we are wisely stewarding taxpayers’ dollars, but we have enough lack of structure so that the smart people at these laboratories can do what smart people do … and smart people think very differently.”
‘I Don’t Like Metrics’
Held said a focus on metrics and requirements had taken its toll on the labs. “I’m a CIA ops guy. I don’t like metrics,” he said. “Even the word makes me feel kind of uncomfortable. And if we use kind of a metrics approach to drive national laboratories, we will be driving the national laboratories toward lower, lower risks; and we will be driving them to produce widgets.” He added: “We don’t need them to produce that. We need them to really think big and take on these big challenges.” Previously, he said a focus on high fees at the labs was not serving as a motivator for contractors running them, suggesting a move to management of NNSA sites in the “public interest” that would involve significantly less fee.
A new, “more agile” governance structure would allow the labs to assume their unique role in the DOE complex, Held said. “I don’t think we need national laboratories to aspire to be the low cost producer of widgets. I don’t think that’s why national laboratories exist,” he said. “The low-cost producer role belongs to the American private sector. The American private sector knows how to do that very well. What we national laboratories for is to take on really hard technical challenges that are facing our nation and our national policymakers—take on high risk, hard problems that involve too much risk for the private sector to honestly support.”
Held Cites Creation of UPF Red Team
Held cited the recent creation of a Red Team to look at alternatives to the Uranium Processing Facility as an example of utilizing the labs’ skills on a difficult problem. The team is led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason, who is pulling talent from other national labs around the DOE complex to work on the problem. “We didn’t have to negotiate a contract. We didn’t have to negotiate a new work authorization statement. I don’t even actually know how we’re paying for their time,” Held said. “What we did know is we had a really important problem, we had a lot of really smart people around the complex that could bring great talent to bear, and we asked them to do that. They stepped up and they’re doing it.” He added: “We have the deputy lab director for Argonne National Lab who just simply because we asked him to do it, has stepped up and he’s participating in this team as a team member and he’s not thinking, ‘What’s in it for Argonne?’ He’s thinking, ‘What’s in it for the nation?’ “
