Senior Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee continue to believe that they must intervene to reform the National Nuclear Security Administration, and in a letter yesterday to NNSA Administrator Tom D’Agostino, Reps. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) and Michael Turner (R-Ohio) rebuffed the agency’s suggestion that its own reform efforts would address management problems plaguing the agency. McKeon and Turner were responding to a six-page July 2 letter from D’Agostino detailing actions it has already taken to enhance efficiency, increase productivity and improve relationships with the contractors that run its plants and laboratories. “The lack of a comprehensive strategic vision or plan for decisive action is why we continue to believe that Congress has no choice but to once again act, as it did in 1999 when it created NNSA to fix what the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board then called a ‘dysfunctional bureaucracy that has proven it is incapable of reforming itself,’ ” McKeon and Turner wrote. “We have seen no action or plan of action by the President to convince us to the contrary.”
Frustrated with the productivity of the agency, the committee drafted language in the House-passed version of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act that increases the autonomy of the agency, eliminates Department of Energy Office of Health, Safety and Security oversight of the agency, moves the agency toward performance-based oversight, and cuts back on federal staff. D’Agostino suggested that the agency was already making progress toward reform, and said some actions already taken include efforts to revise, consolidate and eliminate safety and security directives, develop governance reform metrics, revise contractual requirements, and implement a pilot program emphasizing strategic results over transaction-based oversight. The agency also created a new Associate Administrator for Acquisition and Project Management as well as an Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Operations, reorganized its site office reporting structure, and moved to consolidate the management and operating contracts at the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Pantex Plant, among other initiatives.
McKeon and Turner noted that many of the actions taken by the agency have already been tried or have been underway for years, and they encouraged the Administration to offer a “comprehensive reform package” that deals with functions in and outside of the NNSA. “We regret that your response does not address the fundamental problem: that NNSA and DOE are allowing cost and delay—driven largely by administrative and structural problems—to threaten the President’s own nuclear modernization objectives,” the lawmakers wrote. “… We do not see how the actions outlined in your letter solve this problem.”