Tom Temin: Now, you looked at not the modernization of the stockpile itself, which is a huge effort, hundreds of billions of dollars if it goes through. But the agency trying to redo itself so that it can do that task better.
Allison Bawden: Absolutely. Back in September 2022, NNSA sort of did this self-assessment and issued a report that made 18 recommendations for agency reforms that could undertake that all had a purpose of making things more efficient, reducing red tape and trying to speed up delivery on modernization efforts.
Tom Temin: And these modernization efforts, then these are carried out, I presume, by contractors or is it done by staff of the NNSA?
Allison Bawden: It’s actually a little bit of both. So the contractors absolutely carry out the direction of the federal workforce and executing modernization programs. But it really is a partnership between the federal staff and the contractors to make sure these programs and projects succeed.
Tom Temin: And these projects. And we’ll get back to the NNSA. But the projects themselves are touching these warheads that are in bunkers and tubes underground. So it’s pretty sensitive work, then?
Allison Bawden: Absolutely. One of the major recommendations for reform out of this report had to do with the processes and procedures around how we manage that modernization effort, but the reforms also covered a whole variety of issues, from recruitment and retention of staff to kind of much more narrow issues surrounding kind of requirements on specific contractors. It ran the whole gamut of narrow to large reforms.
Tom Temin: Yeah. In other words, you say to the contractor, don’t drop that. Whatever you do, you know what? You’re in a nuclear bunker there. But the agency itself then must have felt it had some shortcomings or maybe the administration at that time, the Biden administration, or maybe it was members of Congress that decided NNSA needed to reform itself. What’s the background to what it is they were trying to do?
Allison Bawden: Sure. So really, the NNSA was looking at the portfolio of work that it has to accomplish between now and really the mid-2040s with respect to modernization. It’s truly the busiest time the enterprise has ever been since the Cold War. And they’re looking at this level of effort and seeing time to delivery and concern about being able to meet those really rigorous schedules. And so it undertook this effort in order to think about how it could meet those schedules by reducing work processes that lead to inefficiencies or that didn’t incentivize schedule as a top priority.
Tom Temin: And how well are they doing that, did you find?
Allison Bawden: It’s really a mixed bag. So they issued this report that had 18 recommendations. Ultimately, they went forward with 15 reforms. Some of them are very similar to the recommendations that were in the report and others differ quite substantially. When they got into the work of designing the reforms, they found that the original recommendations weren’t quite right in some cases. And so some things got abandoned, some things changed in scope or significantly shifted. Most are considered complete at this point. Some are still ongoing. But NNSA’s challenge really to determine how successful these reforms have been because they never really set out to measure the effectiveness of them. When we talked to the staff who were involved in implementing the reforms, many of their firms did not have metrics in place to determine if they were meeting their objectives and weren’t collecting data to do that.
Tom Temin: And what are some of the major reforms specifically that they were trying to do?
Allison Bawden: Some of them have to do with the contracts themselves. So for example, there are these eight major sites throughout the country that comprise the nuclear security enterprise and they’re managed and operated by contractors on behalf of the government. And so some of the reforms we’re looking at kind of are the financial incentives right in those contracts. Are the terms right in those contracts to ensure stability and also best value for the government. Other things are really around flexibilities in project management. So does everything need to follow a very rigorous project management standards or can some projects that are less complex and more commercial, like follow commercial construction practices instead? So those are the kind of flavor of some of the reforms.
Tom Temin: Right. So for example, something that could be commercial would be maybe installing a new door to replace an ancient door to an old bunker.
Allison Bawden: Sure. Or even replacing an entire office building or a fire station, for example.
Tom Temin: Whereas replacing a nuclear warhead. That would be more, I guess, task-specific?
Allison Bawden: Certainly a higher level of risk.
Tom Temin: Sure. Yeah, let’s hope so. We’re speaking with Allison Bawden. She’s director of natural resources and environment at the Government Accountability Office. And the question must have come up. Do they have enough people to do this aside from the current situation of federal employees?
Allison Bawden: We have had numerous reports over the last several years that have found that the National Nuclear Security Administration is, in fact, understaffed for its functions. And one of the concerns that we raise in this report is that a number of the reforms that NNSA proposed to undertake, and is in the process of undertaking, relate to the reasons that the agency has been on our high risk list since 1990. That risk exists to identify programs and functions in the government that, in our assessment, are at highest risk for fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement. And in the case of NNSA, much of that issue resides in the agency’s capacity to appropriately oversee the contractors that undertake this incredibly important work for our nation’s national and nuclear security. So when we did our assessment, we homed in really on a handful of the reform efforts that had the greatest association with reasons why the agency has been on our high risk list to see if those issues had been considered in designing the reforms. For the most part, we found that they had not.
Tom Temin: I was going to say is hiring reform and staffing reform, was that part of their reform plan?
Allison Bawden: Absolutely. They were looking at the factors that affect recruitment and retention, looking at federal and contractor pay, commuting distance and cost, all those kinds of things.
Tom Temin: Is one of the issues they’ve dealt with, maybe just how remote some of the facilities to be overseen are? Guess what? You get to move to Minot, North Dakota or whatever it is. Probably a lovely place, but not something if you went to college somewhere would sound all that appealing.
Allison Bawden: Certainly some of these facilities are in remote places and that’s by design for public safety reasons. But it can create significant challenges in terms of recruiting and retaining both federal and contractor staff. Sometimes housing is scarce in these areas, and so people have to live pretty far from where they work, which contributes to both their time to commute and the cost of commuting and can really affect people’s quality of life.
Tom Temin: And what do we know that’s going on currently? Is this an agency where temporary employees or probationary employees have been let go? Is the NNSA part of all of this current activity?
Allison Bawden: Well, there’s been a lot of news reporting on that recently in terms of staff who were let go and then brought back. I’m not sure the picture is totally clear at this point. What I can say is that our work has really pointed to the need for significant recruitment and retention, both among federal employees and contractor employees, because of the increasing workload that this agency faces over the next 20 years to complete this nuclear modernization.
Tom Temin: And do people that they need require degrees in nuclear engineering, highly specific things, or can they just be generally good project managers?
Allison Bawden: All of the above. So good project managers, absolutely critical. Project control specialists, critical. But nuclear engineers, nuclear physicists and highly specialized tradespeople. So precision welders, electricians. Working in a nuclear space is quite complicated and requires tremendous investment in training for people to become proficient.
Tom Temin: And it’s probably been decades since the United States designed a brand new nuclear weapon. This is all retrofitting and upgrading and keeping going. It has the workforce that can do this dwindled?
Allison Bawden: Certainly it has. The workforce has aged and a significant proportion of the workforce is retirement eligible. But over the years, and NNSA has sought ways to retain folks, even if they are retirement eligible, to ensure appropriate knowledge transfer to the next generation of weapons physicists.
Tom Temin: You might say these missiles are the COBOL of weapons systems.
Allison Bawden: They are certainly old. There is work going on to modernize them and to ensure their continued safety and performance into the future.
Tom Temin: And with the recommendations that you had, it’s fair to say the agency agreed with them?
Allison Bawden: Yes. The agency agreed with all of the eight recommendations that we made and, importantly, is seeking to sort of design and implement more reforms going forward. And so our recommendations are really with an eye toward helping the agency ensure that future reform efforts is successful and that they have data and information available to demonstrate that they’ve been successful.
Tom Temin: So if Chris Wright, the new energy secretary, has a good sense of this, he’ll leave it the heck alone?
Allison Bawden: Well, I can’t comment on what the new leadership team will do, but certainly I think everyone recognizes that this is an important national security mission.
