Weapons Complex Monitor
December 10, 2012
NAPA Study Of Nat’l Labs Recommend More Strategic Approach
A
forthcoming National Academy of Public Administration report concludes
that the Department of Energy needs to be more strategic in how it
manages its laboratories, DOE Office of Management Director Ingrid Kolb
said last week at the Energy Facility Contractors Group semiannual
meeting. NAPA is expected to release its Congressionally mandated study
in January, but Kolb outlined the initial findings last week, noting
that one of the group’s main recommendations will be to establish an
external commission that would examine how the Department is
strategically planning work done at the laboratories. The study was
mandated by Fiscal Year 2012 omnibus appropriations legislation. “They
particularly wanted to emphasize that the labs should be focused on work
that supports national needs,” Kolb said. “They thought we were a
little too focused on just the science world, just the NNSA world, just
the energy world. They want to see more integration.”
Kolb said
NAPA is also recommending that other commissions be created to look at
how the Department is funding infrastructure improvements at the
laboratories, including using third party financing alternatives, that
the funds distribution system for the labs be streamlined, and more
clarity provided on the role of Contractor Assurance Systems. “I think
it’s a very good idea since CAS seems to mean different things to
different people,” she said. Kolb also said the NAPA study also urged
DOE to move to more “outcome-based” assessments of laboratory
performance rather than more transaction-based oversight. “The Office of
Science uses such a system,” she said, “but other systems in DOE get
much more down in the weeds with lots of performance indicators.”
3 comments:
More worthless studies and commissions to fiddle with while Rome burns.
They missed the mark.
In other words, the NNSA labs need more expensive and totally useless bean-counters issuing more meaningless metrics to keep the place in order.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. There really is no hope of turning these labs around from their slow decline, is there?
Oh, and "national needs"? The problem with that term is no one really knows what it means. Scientific research is unpredictable and you never really know what breakthrough will change everything. That's why the labs used to be so diversified, but, alas, no longer. This nation has decided to hide its head in the sand like an ostrich. A construction firm like Bechtel is a perfect fit for the labs given that type of limited thinking.
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