The Department of Energy performs about $2 billion in work annually for federal agencies and other customers–about $1.5 billion of that for the Defense Department–but lacks centralized records to ensure all research objectives are being met and relies on individual labs to approve projects rather than following department-wide guidelines, a Government Accountability Office report found.
DoE’s Work For Others (WFO) program is intended to help other federal entities, state agencies, universities and more leverage technology and expertise they could not afford to have in-house, though program guidelines dictate that WFO may not interfere with private industry opportunities to do business with government and academia. DoE-level offices should also approve proposals before they are forwarded to laboratories across the country, and the research sponsor is supposed to pay for all labor and material.
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| The Energy Department’s national laboratories conduct about $1.5 billion in work a year on behalf of the Defense Department. Above, Sandia National Laboratory researchers developed a self-guided bullet that could seek a laser designated target. Photo: Sandia National Lab. |
But the GAO report found that “DoE falls short, however, in ensuring that these requirements are consistently met. For example, DoE has frequently relied on the laboratories to determine whether WFO projects selected meet the requirements of the WFO order, and DoE officials have accepted the laboratories’ determinations without taking steps to independently verify these determinations…By relying instead on the laboratories to make these determinations, DoE cannot ensure that all WFO projects meet requirements.”
“DoE may also not be able to ensure that the costs of WFO projects are recovered according to its pricing order because it has not required the laboratories to establish written procedures to guide development of project budgets or charging of costs to projects, important steps for determining and recovering the full costs of WFO projects’ materials and services,” the report continues. “The department’s [chief financial officer] also does not have assurance that the full costs of WFO projects are charged to the projects’ sponsors because field CFOs do not always conduct biennial pricing reviews according to requirements.”
The WFO program had previously prepared annual summary reports of all its activities, though in the past several years those reports were not filed. The department plans to eliminate the reporting requirement despite requests from Congress and other offices for information that would be publicly available if these reports were filed, the GAO report notes. That data could also be used to assess the success of the program or highlight deficiencies that ought to be addressed, which the report notes is challenging to do now and means “decision makers will not have the needed information to track the program’s progress in meeting its objectives.”
DoD has gained quite a bit from the WFO program over the years. In 2012, for example, six national laboratories carried out the majority of the work performed for DoD: Idaho, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia national laboratories. In the case of the Idaho National Laboratory, DoE experts in laser decontamination of surfaces have helped the Army develop a system to remove chemical agent residues from contaminated equipment, which would reduce risk to troops and lessen contaminated waste in the event of a chemical attack.
However useful the end results of the research, the GAO report takes issue with the process by which work is accepted and monitored. According to the report, 8 of 17 labs reported that their staffs, not DoE staffs, determined whether all criteria were met to accept the project. Twelve of the labs do not have written procedures for developing budgets or charging costs–at one of the labs, about $400,000 in costs went un-reimbursed as a result, according to the report.
To improve management and oversight of WFO, GAO recommends that DoE ensure compliance of its procedures for project approval, require labs to establish and follow written procedures for budgeting and billing the sponsors of WFO projects, conduct biennial pricing reviews, specify what information should be included in annual project reviews and ensure those reviews are available for those who need the information, and establish performance measures so as to be able to assess the WFO program as a whole.