DOE Announces Review of National Laboratories
The Department of Energy has responded to calls from Capitol Hill and the Galvin Commission to reassess its national laboratories. Earlier this month, DOE Deputy Secretary Charles B. Curtis and Ford Motor Company Vice President John P. McTague announced a series of future reviews about how DOE R&D is done, the roles of its laboratories, and ways that administrative costs can be cut.
DOE’s initial focus will not be on its large multiprogram laboratories. Instead, the department and its Laboratory Operations Board (co-chaired by Curtis and McTague) will first review how program managers allocate R&D among DOE labs, universities, and industry. This analysis, to be completed by November 1, 1996, will also determine if R&D should be done by fewer performers. During 1997, another review will be made of DOE’s seven small, mission-specific laboratories that have annual budgets of up to $50 million. As outlined in a new two-volume report, “Strategic Laboratory Mission Plan - Phase I,” this review will “validate their roles, or, relatedly, determine if they are candidates for privatization, alternative contracting mechanisms, or closure. Further action will be taken on such candidates during the next year.” DOE is already moving on this front, as it has just agreed to privatize its principal oil research lab in Oklahoma.
DOE and the Review Board will then examine the “institutional and strategic plans for the multiprogram laboratories to determine how these may better contribute to the needs of the Department.” No date is given for this review. Curtis said that there were no preordained objectives about the future of these nine laboratories. The report appears to back away from closure of any of the three weapons design labs. In general, the report characterized closure of labs as an “irreversible step,” adding “many of the cost-savings may be illusory.” Instead, “downsizing in place” is described as a way to reduce funding requirements.
A major impetus for this action are coming cuts in DOE funding, which Curtis estimated to be as high as 36%. DOE has, he warned, “very, very serious outyear problems.” Results of this review will begin to appear in the FY 98 budget request.
Looking ahead, the report comments, “Although the short-term forecast is for increasingly tight DOE budgets, the long-term picture suggests that the Nation’s overall (public and private) support for science and technology will remain steady, if not actually grow.... The size of the Department’s laboratories 5, 10, or 15 years from now will depend to a considerable extent on whether these institutions are cost-effective performers of R&D in the public interest.” The release of this report by the Laboratory Operations Board is, McTague commented, “a good beginning.”
To obtain a copy of this two-volume report, call DOE’s Public Inquiries Branch at 202-586-5575. The text of the first volume can be found on DOE’s HomePage at http://www.doe.gov under the What’s New Section.
