The Department of Energy’s national laboratories are “choking” on a “proliferation of duplicative and burdensome” requirements, according to a Secretary of Energy Advisory Board task force on lab management, which recommended in a recently released interim report that the Department streamline administrative constraints on the labs. The task force said the “efficiency and operations” of the labs would be “greatly improved if there were greater clarity about how the authority, responsibility, and potential for liability” was more clearly defined across the six organizations with a role in managing the labs: headquarters, field offices, service centers, operational oversight offices, laboratory leadership, and management and operating contractors.
The SEAB task force also recommended that a Laboratory Policy Implementation Office be created for National Nuclear Security Administration and energy labs, mirroring the Office of Laboratory Policy that helps oversee Office of Science labs. The offices would “facilitate operations and associated operational efficiencies with each laboratory, and … expedite resolution of the numerous issues that regularly arise that impede program execution and unnecessarily increase costs,” the task force said. “The focus should be both on improving program outcomes and managing cost and risk.” The task force also recommended strengthening technology transfer activities and establishing an across-the-board Laboratory Directed Research and Development funding level of 6 percent of laboratory budgets.