day-to-day management of eight major projects required by NWPA to four DOE field operations offices. These offices, in turn, rely heavily on support from national laboratories and other major contractors to conduct specific activities. Basically, these delegations continue DOE's longstanding practice of assigning to its field offices responsibility for program execution under headquarters direction. ALLOCATION OF INITIAL STAFFING AUTHORIZATIONS Fiscal year 1984 was the first year a personnel authorization had been separately established for DOE's NWPA implementation activities. In the following sections we (1) discuss the allocation of the personnel authorization among OCRWM and the field operations offices, (2) present a snapshot, as of February 19, 1984, of DOE's efforts to assign full-time staff to those offices, and (3) discuss events leading to the assignment of OCRWM's first permanent director in May 1984. Members of Congress (as well as others) have been concerned about the need for DOE to have permanent staff dedicated solely to carrying out the act, including the appointment of a permanent director. As early as May 1983 the House Committee on Appropriations expressed this concern in the following way: continued progress in carrying out the requirements of this Act will require a permanent staff director. "1 Allocation of personnel authorization Due to government-wide restraints on federal civilian employment, DOE can assign in any given fiscal year only a limited number of its overall allocated personnel resources to carry out NWPA. For fiscal year 1984, the personnel ceiling was 191 staffyears.2 Of this amount, DOE allocated --104 staffyears, or 54 percent, among four field operations offices--Chicago (51), Richland, (32), Nevada (20), and Idaho (1) -- and --87 staffyears, or 46 percent, to the OCRWM headquarters 1 Committee report on the 1984 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill (H.R. 3132), H.R. Rep. 217, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 102 (1983). 2 Total employment in most civilian agencies is tightly controlled by the Office of Management and Budget on a full-time equivalent (work-year) basis. To avoid overuse of staffing resources, the heads of OCRWM and each field operations office are responsible for ensuring that the total time spent by all assigned employees, including those working less than full time, on NWPA implementation activities does not exceed the program's respective personnel allocations. On the basis of these allocations, each office is responsible for its own position management and staffing utilization. Accordingly, not all of the 191 staffyears translate into actual positions for full-time staff dedicated solely to NWPA implementation activities. Some of these resources are used to support OCRWM or a field project office but are not directly assigned to either. For example, the Nevada Operations Office in February 1984 estimated that in support of its repository project, 10 of its 20 allocated staffyears would be used by four other units within the operations office--Manager's office (1.4 staffyears), Assistant Manager for Administration (2.9), Assistant Manager for Operations (2.6), and Assistant Manager for Engineering and Safety (3.1). Status of permanent staffing The table on p. 62 presents the status of DOE efforts to staff OCRWM and major field project offices with full-time employees as of February 19, 1984. As shown, --144 full-time staff members had been assigned (71 in OCRWM and 73 in the field) and --vacant positions totaled 57 (29 in OCRWM and 28 in the According to the director of OCRWM's Management Support Division, it was taking from 1 to 6 months to fill each vacancy, depending on whether the position was filled by lateral transfer of an existing federal employee or an outside hire. Assignment of a permanent director One key position that was apparently difficult to fill was the OCRWM director's position. Since its activation in October 1983, OCRWM has been headed by two different acting directors. NWPA requires the director3 to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. In February 1984, DOE presented for formal consideration by the President a candidate to assume the permanent directorship. According to a DOE response to a congressional inquiry, while DOE had considered a number of candidates since January 1983, most were not interested in the position. A presidential nominee for the position was announced on May 7, 1984, and confirmed by the Senate on May 24, 1984. 3NWPA set the compensation of the Director, OCRWM, at a rate payable for level IV of the Executive Schedule, which is equivalent to the salary of an Assistant Secretary position in DOE. DOE Staff Dedicated Solely to Carrying Out NWPA aIncludes Senior Executive Service, professional, and secretarial/ clerical staff working full time in the listed offices. include support staff in other DOE headquarters offices or field operations offices which may be working full time or part time on NWPA activities. bIncludes 15 temporarily detailed full-time staff in the OCRWM. Source: GAO summary of data provided by the Director, Management Support Division, Office of Administrative Management, OCRWM. STRONG MANAGEMENT CONTROLS OVER REPOSITORY PLANNING AND EXECUTION ARE IMPORTANT DOE's basic operational approach calls for headquarters program offices to be responsible for program policy and its field offices for program execution. Under this decentralized management approach, DOE has generally divided responsibilities for repository siting and development as follows: --The headquarters OCRWM is responsible for developing and providing the various field offices overall program policy direction and controlling and establishing overall program schedules and budgets. --The field offices are responsible for managing all project activities, including the work of national laboratories and major contractors. --National laboratories and other major contractors are responsible for conducting most project activities, including preparing and implementing quality assurance plans. Utility representatives have questioned whether this decentralized management approach is the most cost-effective way for DOE to assure the availability of the first geologic repository by the planned 1998 date. Stating that they have been providing money to the Nuclear Waste Fund at a rate of about $25 million each month, their primary concern is whether DOE will fulfill its responsibilities. To assure effective and efficient control of the repository program, they have called for a strong, centrally controlled project office with substantial control over DOE's field activities. DOE's heavy reliance on contractors While we did not attempt to evaluate in this year's review the adequacy of DOE's existing planning and control mechanisms, we noted that DOE relies heavily on systems of key contractors for repository project planning and control. According to information DOE provided a congressional committee, contractors carry out about 90 to 95 percent of the repository siting and development activities and the ratio of contractor employees to DOE in-house employees was about 20 to 1. To obtain another perspective on the extent of DOE's reliance on contractors, we acquired a listing of all contracts DOE funded during fiscal year 1983 for the three projects in the first repository program. On the basis of this information, 4 we found that DOE had committed about $228 million through 210 prime contracts or subcontracts for these projects, as shown below. (This amount 4Appendix VI provides a more detailed summary. We did not attempt to verify DOE's data because our only purpose in acquiring the data was to obtain a perspective on the amount of funds contractors control. |