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U.S. Nuclear Threat Reduction Work Suffers From Poor Accounting, GAO Auditors Find By David Francis WASHINGTON — The U.S. Energy Department has failed to implement adequate accounting controls on its nuclear nonproliferation work in Russia and other nations, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (see GSN, July 28). The auditors examined records for contracts managed by the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration and found that one agency office lacked “the processes ensuring that work done under a contract meets contract specifications and that payments go to contractors as intended.” “Staff could not provide a complete set of deliverables, invoices, and approvals of deliverables and invoices for seven of the nine contracts we reviewed,” the GAO report states. “The types of missing documents differed among contracts.” The agency said the inability of the NNSA Office of Nonproliferation and International Security to deliver the documents might indicate that officials who manage contract work do not have access to these records. The office lacks “procedural guidance on how to maintain management controls for its contracts” and “does not periodically review its management control processes … to ensure that the controls remain appropriate and effective,” according to the report. To correct these problems, the Government Accountability Office recommends that: the National Nuclear Security Administration “develop guidance for implementing and documenting management controls … program managers have quick access to key contract records, regardless of the records’ location, and NNSA perform periodic reviews of its management controls to ensure their effectiveness.” The report states that the nuclear security agency accepted the recommendations and would begin working to implement those changes. However, NNSA officials objected to the assessment of management controls in certain cases. The report, requested by members of the Senate and House of Representatives armed services committees, also found that the NNSA Nuclear Risk Reduction Office and the International Material Projection and Cooperation could document controls for nearly all contracted work. The Government Accountability Office reviewed two Nuclear Risk Reduction Office and seven Material Projection and Cooperation contracts. Work contracted by the Nuclear Security Administration includes “upgrading the security of nuclear weapons sites and ‘blending-down’ weapons-grade highly enriched uranium so it can be used in nuclear power plants to generate electricity,” according to the GAO report. The U.S. Energy Department, from fiscal 2001 to 2004, allocated $1.7 billion for this type of contract work.
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