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Saturday, August 30, 2008
Interview with Dr C Paul Robinson
This guy should have been the director for all DOE Labs! Here are Q&As with him I took from LANL's Blog. Full text
I would gladly accept DOD control to get rid of the totally incompetent leadership over at NNSA and DOE. And, by the way, I don't see any Congressmen screaming to cut the daylights out of any of the DOD research labs. It looks to me like putting the nuke labs under DOD might buy the labs a good margin of budgetary safety.
I say, take the two NNSA labs and the production facilities, place them under DOD, and then fire all the staff running NNSA, starting at the top with D'Agostino.
Looking at the NNSA's two page fact sheet on LLNL's future under Complex Transformation (version 8). I think we'd be better off being moved out of NNSA. I'd agree that most of NNSA (LANL, SNL, and production sites) should go to DOD, but LLNL's future is more science work than NNSA work. I would make LLNL a national multi-agency/mulit-program lab under DOE Office of Science, and do the NNSA work as WFO. With Superblock going away, the Q level footprint will shrink - this could be the "NNSA (DOD)" island within LLNL and under their control while the rest of the site belongs to DOE. I'd also rebid the contract with more focus on quality of science and a true GOCO relationship - from Dr Robinson's answer #1....
"(c) There never was effective, cohesive management of the three weapons labs, although in truth it was never possible to “manage” the labs in any traditional sense. The fact has been well established that the Federal government is incapable of “managing the advancement of science” (even though periodically it tries this, through civil-service labs, but untarnished by success.) Because of this fact, the GOCO system (Government-owned, Contractor-operated) was created. The GOCO contractors originally were the nation’s best companies (or universities) in science and technology, who brought their business practices and approaches to the labs. There are only one or two of these left today, with the rest being mostly small outfits whose main business is “running the labs for the government’, motivated by fees they can earn (which was never the case in the original complex.) Worse yet, the bureaucracy of DOE (ERDA, or AEC) has continued to grow and have attempted to “take control” of the labs, and the model has deteriorated more and more to a “government-owned and operated” complex. There are now no longer any barriers to preventing the constantly burgeoning government bureaucracy from being imposed on the labs (and plants) and the advantages of having “private-sector” organizations for their functions has long since vanished. The original approach had been to have the labs responsible for innovations. The labs would propose their ideas to the government and to the military, and once agreement was established between them on “What was to be done”, the labs took over the process of how it should be done and carried the responsibility for achieving the agreed goals. My deeply held conviction is that the GOCO model has deteriorated so far, that it must now either be eliminated or drastically rejuvenated (with a new agency and a “clean sheet of paper.”)"
--------- From the fact sheet...
- Remove CAT I/II quantities of special nuclear material from the site by the end of 2012 and achieve down-grading of “Superblock” buildings 332 & 334;
- Reduce acreage supported by NNSA’s weapons account by 90% with a status change for Site 300;
- Reduce buildings and structures supported by NNSA’s weapons account by 30%; and
- Over a decade or so, up to 20% fewer staff supporting nuclear weapons activities. These reductions are expected through natural attrition and transfer of personnel to other positions supporting essential national security needs.
And in the SNL fact sheet
- Transitioning of SNL/California (410 acres) to a multi-agency lab in order to significantly reduce NNSA landlord costs;
Look people. They're going to do whatever they want to regardless of what we think about it. All we can do at this point in time is express our opinions on the blog and watch the show. The fact is, "It was over the day LLNS took over"
Go ahead and leave, complain, slow down your work, etc. It should be very clear that LLNS doesn't care what happens at LLNL.
It's not about the care and feeding of a science-based workforce any longer. It's only about the profit fees and high executive salaries than LLNS can milk from this lab.
It's over. The fat lady has finished her song and people are quickly clearing out of the auditorium to look for a better performance somewhere else. Maybe if you stick around they can use you for some low wage janitorial work.
7 comments:
Don't thank me, thank Paul!
Dr. Robinson's comments are on the mark.
DoE/NNSA/Congress have all made a mess of the weapon's complex. It needs fixing NOW.
Moving the weapons complex to DoD, getting rid of contractor operators both seem like good ideas in my opinion.
I would gladly accept DOD control to get rid of the totally incompetent leadership over at NNSA and DOE. And, by the way, I don't see any Congressmen screaming to cut the daylights out of any of the DOD research labs. It looks to me like putting the nuke labs under DOD might buy the labs a good margin of budgetary safety.
I say, take the two NNSA labs and the production facilities, place them under DOD, and then fire all the staff running NNSA, starting at the top with D'Agostino.
Looking at the NNSA's two page fact sheet on LLNL's future under Complex Transformation (version 8). I think we'd be better off being moved out of NNSA. I'd agree that most of NNSA (LANL, SNL, and production sites) should go to DOD, but LLNL's future is more science work than NNSA work. I would make LLNL a national multi-agency/mulit-program lab under DOE Office of Science, and do the NNSA work as WFO. With Superblock going away, the Q level footprint will shrink - this could be the "NNSA (DOD)" island within LLNL and under their control while the rest of the site belongs to DOE. I'd also rebid the contract with more focus on quality of science and a true GOCO relationship - from Dr Robinson's answer #1....
"(c) There never was effective, cohesive management of the three weapons labs, although in truth it was never possible to “manage” the labs in any traditional sense. The fact has been well established that the Federal government is incapable of “managing the advancement of science” (even though periodically it tries this, through civil-service labs, but untarnished by success.) Because of this fact, the GOCO system (Government-owned, Contractor-operated) was created. The GOCO contractors originally were the nation’s best companies (or universities) in science and technology, who brought their business practices and approaches to the labs. There are only one or two of these left today, with the rest being mostly small outfits whose main business is “running the labs for the government’, motivated by fees they can earn (which was never the case in the original complex.) Worse yet, the bureaucracy of DOE (ERDA, or AEC) has continued to grow and have attempted to “take control” of the labs, and the model has deteriorated more and more to a “government-owned and operated” complex. There are now no longer any barriers to preventing the constantly burgeoning government bureaucracy from being imposed on the labs (and plants) and the advantages of having “private-sector” organizations for their functions has long since vanished. The original approach had been to have the labs responsible for innovations. The labs would propose their ideas to the government and to the military, and once agreement was established between them on “What was to be done”, the labs took over the process of how it should be done and carried the responsibility for achieving the agreed goals. My deeply held conviction is that the GOCO model has deteriorated so far, that it must now either be eliminated or drastically rejuvenated (with a new agency and a “clean sheet of paper.”)"
---------
From the fact sheet...
- Remove CAT I/II quantities of special nuclear material from the site by the end of 2012 and achieve down-grading of “Superblock” buildings 332 & 334;
- Reduce acreage supported by NNSA’s weapons account by 90% with a status change for Site 300;
- Reduce buildings and structures supported by NNSA’s weapons account by 30%; and
- Over a decade or so, up to 20% fewer staff supporting nuclear weapons activities. These reductions are expected through natural attrition and transfer of personnel to other positions supporting essential national security needs.
And in the SNL fact sheet
- Transitioning of SNL/California (410 acres) to a multi-agency lab in order to significantly reduce NNSA landlord costs;
---------
September 2, 2008 6:03 AM
Look people. They're going to do whatever they want to regardless of what we think about it. All we can do at this point in time is express our opinions on the blog and watch the show. The fact is, "It was over the day LLNS took over"
Go ahead and leave, complain, slow down your work, etc. It should be very clear that LLNS doesn't care what happens at LLNL.
It's not about the care and feeding of a science-based workforce any longer. It's only about the profit fees and high executive salaries than LLNS can milk from this lab.
It's over. The fat lady has finished her song and people are quickly clearing out of the auditorium to look for a better performance somewhere else. Maybe if you stick around they can use you for some low wage janitorial work.
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