Plutonium pits, tank waste and contractor oversight again topped the Department of Energy inspector general’s list of the agency’s biggest management challenge, according to the latest edition, released before Thanksgiving.
The most recent in the rolling series of special reports, “Management Challenges at the Department of Energy,” also assigned the same top priority to DOE’s Office of Science: becoming the federal leader in artificial intelligence deployment.
As in last year’s report, DOE’s internal watchdog said that the nuclear weapons and waste agency, which contracts out more work than nearly any federal agency except the Pentagon, has a weaker contractor debarment program than agencies with smaller contracting footprints.
Over the last few years, DOE’s contractor suspensions and debarments have significantly trailed those of other agencies, the inspector general (IG) said.
Federal debarment figures for fiscal year 2020 were not available at the time of the IG’s report, but the office expected that when they are, they would be similar to the 2019 figures: five suspensions and 19 debarments. That compares with 40 suspension and 97 debarments at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had a budget of about $42 million in 2019 — DOE had about a $30 billion budget that year.
