The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration yesterday announced plans to reduce its federal workforce by 20 percent, and administration officials said they plan to achieve the mark by 2004 (see GSN, Mar. 29).

The personnel reduction is part of a reorganization that takes effect Friday and aims to remove a layer of the agency’s management, the NNSA said in a press release.  Personnel in the agency’s security forces and the Navy Nuclear Propulsion program will not be cut, the agency said.

“We have worked hard this year to make sure our reorganization is done right.  We will manage the reductions in a way that is fair to our outstanding people, while ensuring that the NNSA of the future will have a world-class business environment that eliminates duplication and micromanagement and provides more effective federal oversight,” said Linton Brooks, the agency’s acting administrator.

The agency is altering the current management system in which site offices report to regional operations offices.  Beginning Friday, site offices that oversee contractor work — which currently report to operations offices in Oakland, Calif., Las Vegas, Nev., and Albuquerque, N.M. — will instead report directly to the principal deputy of the NNSA administrator, the release says.  The plan calls for the NNSA operations office in Oakland to be closed and downsizes the Las Vegas site office, which is to focus on managing the Nevada Test Site.

Albuquerque will become the home of an NNSA service center, which will provide support services to the site offices, the agency said (NNSA press release, Dec. 17).

Agency officials said that they want to achieve workforce cuts through attrition and buyouts.  The 158 employees at the Oakland office will either move to direct oversight jobs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or they will relocate to Albuquerque, the Contra Costa Times reported today.  The Albuquerque office, however, will eventually be reduced to 500 jobs from 678 (Andrea Widener, Contra Costa Times, Dec. 18).

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