House panel questions contracting policies for national labs

The Department of Energy (DOE) lacks an understandable contracting policy for its national laboratories, members of a House Science subcommittee said on Thursday.

"The logic behind the department's recent contracting decisions has been hard to follow," said Illinois Republican Judy Biggert, chairwoman of the Energy Subcommittee.

Robert Card, the department's undersecretary for energy, science and the environment, said the department would be establishing an independent panel to re-examine competition policies and practices involving federally funded research and development centers.

"The commission is expected to assess the department's competitive policies and procedures to determine the circumstances and criteria under which competition can best assist DOE in maintaining high-quality research and efficient and effective operation of its government-owned facilities," Card said.

But Biggert criticized the plan, noting that Energy announced plans for the commission the day after announcing that it would compete several lab-management contracts. "You can't help but wonder if the department was putting the cart before the horse," she said.

"I am skeptical that the commission's report alone will enhance accountability enough to solve management problems like the many that have been exposed at Los Alamos," she added in a reference to one of the department's labs.

Robin Nazzaro, director of natural resources and environment at the General Accounting Office (GAO), suggested a two-fold solution.

"GAO has reported that DOE must effectively oversee its contractors' activities in carrying out projects and use appropriate outcome measures to assess overall results and apply lessons learned to continually improve its contracting policies," she said. "Just competing a contract does not ensure that contractor performance will improve."

John McTague, professor of materials at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said that contracting should be used only in worst-case scenarios. "I think there should be a bias [toward the labs] unless [the labs'] performance is egregious," he said.

"The core of the success of the [research centers] concept is that the government sponsor dictates the mission goals, the 'whats,' while the contractor specifies and implements the methods for achieving the goals, the 'hows,'" McTague said. "Unlike the sponsors of the other [research centers] ... DOE has had a persistent history of trying to specify the 'hows.'"

Paul Fleury, dean of engineering at Yale University, said the concept of government-owned, contract-operated management is "severely distorted by micromanagement, and [the] compliance-driven approaches ... substantially reduce much-needed mutual trust."

"The main mission of the DOE labs are science and national security," he added. And to return to that mission, Fleury suggested a follow-up to the post-Cold War restructuring implemented by the department.