Thursday, February 6, 2014
INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT
INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT - ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS?
The Office of Inspector General has issued a report titled “Performance of Work for a Non-Department Entity at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory," (INS-O-14-01).
This report is now available for viewing and can be accessed by clicking the link below:
http://energy.gov/node/796196
If you are unable to access this report, please call (202) 586-4128 for assistance.
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19 comments:
MINOR BS. IN TODAY'S CCC TIMES
HEAF should take a lesson from NIF. HEAF goes small screen with the National Geographic study and gets its hand slapped while NIF rents out the place for the big screen Star Trek and is the darling of the Tri-Valley during the filming.
Sometimes, life isn't fair.
And the IG wastes oxygen (and tax payer money) to produce a few pages of information the usual year or so after the fact when no one really cares any more. A totally irrelevant organization - by design.
This is what should be audited.
The people who care about this are the feds with funding; when we approach them with outstretched palms asking for funds to do serious national security work for them while at the same time we are working for free on frivolous tasks for National Geographic it makes them wonder about our core values. This might have been good PR for the lab with the general public but it hurt us with our national security sponsors.
Perhaps the HEAFs folks should have worked this out better with NNSA sure but come on. As pointed out above NIF "rents out" for Star Trek? How much was the rent compared to man hour effort lost or man hour effort rerouted to stay out of that laser bay during filming? Wasn't that precious time for NIF rental money or not? NIF employees get Star Trek T shirts at the picnic, and HEAF employees get tar and feathered. "Its great to be king" as Mel Brooks said.
February 9, 2014 at 1:06 PM:
HEAF employees did not get tarred and feathered. They were only doing what they were authorized by LLNL management. The IG report was actually pretty mild and the amount of $ being questioned is very small (in fact, so small that surely there was more cost than was admitted); the criticism was directed at LLNL management for not understanding the restrictions on using Licensing & Royalty funds (which has broader implications), and the Livermore Field Office feds for lack of effective oversight. If NIF got some rent from the producers, fine; if you know that the amount did not constitute the full cost recovery mandated by DOE Orders then you should document the costs of rerouting effort due to the filming and turn that info in to the NNSA or IG. HEAF got nothing from National Geographic - the LLNL work was done at absolutely no cost to them; hence the IG report. If HEAF wants to hold a picnic and charge the attendees fees for food and T-shirts, then they can get T-shirts, too. That is up to them.
1. Effective product branding...
2. Effective international recognition of employee competence...
All for less than $100k.
The IG spent more than that whining about it.
Perhaps this IG office could use a slight reduction in its staffing authorization, as its marginal use of investigative labor seems counterproductive.
There just need to be fewer federal employees. Much of what each does is redundant, foolish or useless.
How about a simple 1% staffing cut to all federal organizations.
THINGS WOULD IMPROVE.
Oh yeah, and 3. we better understand one simulation and experimental validation of how an older freighter might respond to an internal explosion. What useless information.
4. A scientist retains or improves his/her understanding of weapons effects simulation and experimental correlation.
What a dumb way to run a national laboratory. Science. humbug
5. Current employees are warned again by these events that they work for ignorant, foolish bureaucrats.
That's a pretty good haul for a little explosion in HEAF.
If this was such a good thing for HEAF then the lab should have used some LLNS funds out of their corporate profits, instead of misusing L&R funds and turning a good opportunity into a black eye.
the lab should have used some LLNS funds out of their corporate profits,
February 11, 2014 at 3:41 AM
You don't understand how it works. As soon as LLNS makes a "profit" the money is immediately divided up to the LLNS directors' and officers' salary and bonus accounts, and to the parent companies, according to established formulas - nothing is retained by LLNS. The provisions of the contract establishing LLNS, LLC state that LLNS is simply a "pass-through" entity.
So why can't one of the parent companies - such as UC - use some of those funds 'passed-through' to them, to pay for efforts such as this? Don't most companies re-invest some of their profits into the enterprise as research seed money or to cover desired work that is unfunded by the contract?
By contract the parent companies have no role in funding or operations for LLNS/LLNL. The government required that the LLC be a separate entity. There is no mechanism for the parent companies to fund LLNS/LLNL. It is not their "enterprise." The only parent company with any interest in research per se is UC, and their share of the profit goes into research at UC.
There is nothing to prevent UC from directing a portion of their profit into work @ LLNL.
There is nothing to prevent UC from directing a portion of their profit into work @ LLNL.
February 12, 2014 at 11:55 PM
You mean there's nothing to stop them from giving money back to LLNS instead of supporting the researchers at their own campuses? Right. I'm sure that's what they had in mind when they joined the LLC. HaHaHaHa!
I agree that it is funny. Just not precluded.
UC *does* return some of their fee for their participation in both LANS and LLNS to support research at the Labs. It's called the UC Lab Fees Research Program. Funding goes to both university faculty and Lab researchers. The Program's goals are:
Supporting collaborative research between UC faculty and Laboratory scientists.
Supporting UC graduate students in programs that promote interaction between Laboratory scientists and UC graduate programs.
Supporting research that takes advantage of unique Laboratory facilities, especially involving students.
Supporting research in the physical, life, or social sciences, or in the humanities, on topics aligned with the mission of the laboratories.
See http://www.ucop.edu/research-grants-program/programs/uc-lab-fees-research-grants/index.html
A list of the awardees in the last round of awards is at http://www.ucop.edu/research-grants-program/_files/labresrfp/awardees-by-campus2012.pdf
Thanks, this is interesting. Is there a list of the $ amounts of the awards posted somewhere?
It looks like there might be a mechanism available for UC to pay for the LLNL support to National Geographic using a portion of their profits.
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