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Progress in Establishing Structures and Practices to Implement the Strategic Vision and the Governance and Management Framework

One of the principal concerns that the panel expressed in Report 3 (February 2019)¹ was the lack of urgency by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in putting in place the documentation and other institutional structures needed for governance and management improvements to take root and to last. The panel mentioned several times in that report the importance of institutionalization and related steps:

Over the past year, the panel has seen some progress by NNSA in institutionalizing governance and management reform; however, the efforts under way are early steps.

NNSA’S INITIATIVES TO PUT THE DESIRED GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE AND TO INSTITUTIONALIZE THOSE INITIATIVES

This section briefly describes several initiatives undertaken by NNSA over the past year that appear directed toward changing governance and management culture in line with principles contained in the strategic documents. Generally speaking, these initiatives adjust the institutional environment so that it can better foster a more collaborative and mission-focused culture.

Insofar as these recent initiatives turn out to be successful, their results should become evident in the coming months and years—first, in the positive impressions, attitudes, and behaviors exhibited and described by leaders and employees throughout the enterprise, and second, in improvements in the enterprise’s decision making and performance. For now, the panel is encouraged that NNSA is taking steps toward institutionalization of the kind of organization and culture envisioned in the Augustine-Mies report and elsewhere.

The Administrator’s Signature Realignment Initiative

The Administrator’s Signature Realignment, distributed to NNSA personnel in writing in July 2019, consists of several adjustments to NNSA’s management framework. The Administrator specified

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¹ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Academy of Public Administration, 2019, Report 3 on Tracking and Assessing Governance and Management Reform in the Nuclear Security Enterprise, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.

² Ibid., p. 2.

realignment goals that are consistent with the desired culture change, and a working group was designated for each realignment goal. The working groups took a corporate approach (i.e., applying the “One NNSA” principle) and made recommendations to NNSA’s senior leadership that sought to redefine roles and responsibilities so as to minimize redundancy and miscommunication, and they sought to improve accountability by focusing the functional offices on supporting program offices. It is hoped that these changes will streamline decision making and help in the management of risk and will enable greater collaboration and efficiency. The following realignments appear poised to address past governance and management challenges:

• Creation of a matrix organization for planning, programming, budgeting, and evaluation (PPBE). Until recently, different offices carried out PPBE functions using disparate processes and tools, and the individuals who handled that work were not part of a common cadre of professionals. During 2019, some 56 individuals were administratively moved from their offices across NNSA to form a unit of PPBE specialists within the NNSA Office of Management and Budget (NA-MB), although they physically remain located within their original offices. Three internal NNSA policy documents were released in December 2019 to codify key elements of this reform.

  In addition to providing management improvements, including more reliable cost estimation and better analysis of alternatives, it is intended that this realignment will help break down stovepipes by fostering a shared knowledge base for PPBE, which in turn enables PPBE professionals to move between offices as workloads shift. In turn, that should help to spread best practices while providing PPBE professionals with a better understanding of the shared mission of the nuclear security enterprise.

  A senior manager in NA-MB told the panel that he has established a set of metrics intended to demonstrate whether or not the realignment is successful. He also expects the metrics to keep everyone in the mindset of continuous improvement, noting that the current structure is not locked in and can be adjusted if feedback suggests that there is a better way to execute the mission.

• Meshing of the NNSA Office of Acquisition and Project Management’s (NA-APM’s) capabilities with the capabilities in programs and field offices. For three main business lines within the NA-APM, roles, responsibilities, authorities, and accountabilities between headquarters and field offices have been clarified. This has been manifested in adjustments in reporting structure and physical location for some employees. This “One NNSA” approach is meant to streamline decision making in acquisition and construction projects. For large or nuclear line-item construction projects such as the plutonium pit facility at Savannah River, NNSA at an early stage

• convenes an integrated team of acquisition, design, and construction-management professionals, with an official from NA-APM in the lead.

• The role of NNSA External Affairs (NA-EA) is strengthened and better integrated functionally with the field. The strategic messaging function is being enlarged and consolidated at NA-EA headquarters, and NA-EA will establish a functional matrix with field office Public Affairs Officers, who will be functionally aligned with NA-EA but will remain supervised through the field office. This new arrangement is intended to better communicate the work of the nuclear security enterprise by increasing coordination between the program, functional, and field offices, contributing to the cultural expectation of One NNSA.

Other functional offices are also modifying their patterns of working with program and field offices by now having their specialists sit in on weekly project meetings. One example is NNSA’s Office of General Counsel personnel. In this way, the expertise of these personnel is available to program and project personnel in real time, and simultaneously the functional office personnel become and remain much more knowledgeable about the status and challenges of programs and projects. Personal relationships are established, building mutual understanding and trust. Therefore, the functional office personnel can provide better-informed and more-timely advice when needed.

Engagement of Key Management and Operating (M&O) Leaders in the Annual Budget-Building Process

In 2019, NNSA involved upper managers from the labs and plants as it built up a future federal budget request for the enterprise. This collaborative approach, which is a big change from past practice in the enterprise, broadened the range of perspectives incorporated in that planning, and the panel was told that it helped to ensure that the assumptions underlying those budget requests (e.g., the proposed timelines) are realistic and acceptable to those who must execute against them. The panel was also told that some Department of Defense (DoD) officials were consulted as a further check that that important stakeholder was in agreement with the general plans embodied in the early-stage budgets.

Updates to the NNSA Supplemental Directive on Site Governance

NNSA Supplemental Directive on Site Governance SD226.1B, issued in 2016, codified the roles and responsibilities of various components of NNSA and roles and responsibilities of the M&O organizations and their corporate parents with respect to governance of operations at NNSA laboratories and production plants. A revision to this guidance, designated as SD226.1C, was issued on October 1, 2019. The revision codified several arrangements that help to institutionalize the governance and management principles put forth in NNSA’s strategic documents:

• Field Office Program Liaisons. SD226.1C establishes field office positions that are explicitly charged with serving as liaisons to certain NNSA programs with the goal of promoting better integration across the enterprise. It is also possible that the Program Liaisons’ situational awareness might reduce the number of data calls.
• Safety Process Reviews. An appendix to SD226.1C sets out a process for “identifying, coordinating, and conducting requirements-driven safety management program” reviews in order to provide “effective development and consistent implementation of safety programs and requirements.” This process should codify practices that reflect a spirit of partnering and “getting to yes.”
• Site Integrated Assessment Plans. Another appendix to SD226.1C codifies the process for Site Integrated Assessment Plans (SIAPs), which have been developed in recent years to provide a common understanding of external assessments imposed on the sites. That appendix provides

Steps Toward Financial Integration

Two of NNSA’s major offices, NA-50 and NA-20, have relied on a financial system that is different from the system used throughout the rest of the agency. Their use of their own system provides certain benefits for their program managers, but having different financial systems within NNSA clearly interferes with agency-wide financial management. In particular, the two systems in use rely on different work breakdown structures (WBSs), making it difficult to reconcile accounts. As a pilot during FY2020, NA-MB is using a single, uniform WBS throughout NNSA, although the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (NA-20) and Office of Safety, Infrastructure, and Operations (NA-50) may continue to support their alternative system.

It is intended that this step, which responds to Section 3111 of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), will encourage and enable better ways to manage budgeting and also enable further reductions in cost controls. It should reduce the record keeping and reporting burden on M&Os and enable the generation of financial data that is comparable across the enterprise.³

Governance and Management Core Values and Expectations Added to the Performance Evaluation of Most NNSA Supervisors

Recently, NNSA’s Human Resources Office issued a “Specific Performance Objective” to align the performance evaluations of non-Senior Executive Service (SES) supervisors with NNSA’s expectations for governance and management culture, thereby contributing to the institutionalization of the core values promulgated in the 2019 strategic documents. The new performance objective calls for those supervisors to

This addition to supervisor performance evaluations conveys a desirable emphasis on establishing measurable goals and objectives for their work on keeping the governance and management framework in mind as they manage their work. The guidance has a welcome tone of continuous improvement, as conveyed by phrases such as “Responds to potential or actual problems . . . by identifying issues, determining alternative courses of action . . . and elevating to higher-level officials in a timely manner” and “Utilizes [various inputs] to develop/implement initiatives to improve.” Evaluating individual performance against these expectations is both important and difficult. How that will actually be accomplished—thereby enabling NNSA to reward those who are successfully modeling the desired

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³ See also Government Accountability Office, 2020, “National Nuclear Security Administration: Additional Verification Checks Could Improve the Accuracy and Consistency of Reported Financial Data,” GAO-20-180, https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-20-180.

culture—is an open question that must be addressed before governance and management reform can truly be institutionalized.

Operationalization of Governance and Management Strategies Within Various NNSA Offices

The leaders of five NNSA offices have told the panel that they had developed their own strategic plan, vision statement, and strategic goals to align with the higher-level strategic documents. Other initiatives include office realignments; changes in processes to make them more inclusive and transparent; and institutionalizing changes, primarily through documenting processes and procedures.

One manager told the panel that he perceives greater willingness within the organization to identify problems and issues and use these as teachable events to avoid recurrence. He also sees a move away from a punitive “us versus them” approach toward more collaborative problem solving, in line with the principle of “getting to yes.”

Collaborative Recruitment and Hiring Initiatives to Benefit both NNSA and M&Os

NNSA’s Governance and Management Framework emphasizes the need for a world-class workforce. It cites the urgent need across the nuclear security enterprise for additional highly skilled personnel to meet new demands and to replace an expected large number of retirements. Congress, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, raised NNSA’s cap on the number of full-time equivalent federal employees from 1,690 to 1,890, and raised the cap on excepted service hiring authority from 600 to 800 employees. Doing so is an effort to help NNSA hire the federal employees it needs to accomplish its mission.

Recognizing that NNSA’s M&O partners also have tremendous hiring and recruitment needs, NA-MB worked with field offices and M&Os across the country to conduct joint job fairs and to streamline some hiring in 2019. Below are some examples of these efforts:

• Two job fairs were held in Washington, D.C. To maximize the chances of success, the job fairs were held near the Pentagon (potentially a source of individuals who already hold security clearances). Drug testing and other background reviews were done on site. All M&Os that were hiring participated in each job fair along with NNSA offices, and planning cleared away typical barriers and allowed provisional job offers to be made on-site.
• Working with the field offices and M&Os, additional job fairs were held at carefully selected universities around the country during the year to build long-term relationships to create pipelines of talent into NNSA as well as into the M&Os (which have long used this mechanism). Senior NNSA and lab/site/plant officials participated in these, including the Administrator. The planning that would allow immediate job offers to be extended to well-qualified applicants was put in place at some local job fairs, too.
• The length of time to get clearances has been a problem for both NNSA and M&O personnel for some time. By questioning procedures long in place, NNSA’s Human Resources Office (within NA-MB) worked with the Department of Energy (DOE) on how to “get to yes” more quickly and reconfigured its own activities to streamline and significantly reduce the length of time for clearances to come through.

SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATION

The panel is encouraged by the progress being made to reform governance and management in line with the goals envisioned by the Augustine-Mies report and others, including some steps to

institutionalize progress. As part of this culture change, the panel is especially glad to see the emergence of some practices within NNSA that enable continuous governance and management improvement, by providing opportunities to identify areas that need additional attention, as follows:

• The laboratory/site strategic planning process is institutionalizing annual opportunities to identify governance and management issues that impede the mission.
• The NNSA Governance Executive Steering Committee was chartered to implement guidance and share best practices and lessons learned to improve governance and management across the nuclear security enterprise. Its site-specific peer reviews have apparently been valued and could be the foundation for examining many business practices and generalizing and disseminating best practices across the enterprise.
• NNSA’s fall 2019 focus groups demonstrate the value to be gained by surveying (in a sense) the enterprise workforce as a whole, to inform further work on governance and management.

However, the panel’s discussion groups in fall 2019 revealed that those below the leadership level—especially in the M&Os—have not yet observed significant changes, in contrast to the situation at the leadership level. In any major culture change, it is typical for those at the leadership level to be aware of and be the early adopters/implementers of change; it takes longer for change to “take root” below that top level. The panel’s discussion group participants indicated that, while “getting to yes” and “One NNSA” are being adopted by leadership, this mindset is not yet filtering down through the enterprise.

In its past reports, the panel has addressed the critical need for better structured change-management leadership and planning at NNSA. The steps recounted in this chapter do not appear to be part of a coherent plan for change. In Recommendation 3.1 of its second report, issued early in 2018, the panel recommended expeditious creation of a change-management implementation plan:

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⁴ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Academy of Public Administration, 2018, Report 2 on Tracking and Assessing Governance and Management Reform in the Nuclear Security Enterprise, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, pp. 2-3. Report 2 also provided (p. 14) a more detailed description of what the enterprise needs from such a plan:

1. A well-articulated statement of the intended concept of operations and goals (e.g., mission focus, simplicity, and clarity, as well as alignment of resources, organizations, and incentives) and what the intended result will be;
2. A plan for how to achieve the goals and intended results;
3. Active commitment to the goals and vision by senior-most leadership (at both NNSA and DOE);
4. A plan for how to accomplish the change, including centralized leadership and decentralized implementation;
5. Active involvement and engagement of personnel across the enterprise in planning and achieving the change;
6. Regularly scheduled reviews of progress against predetermined measures of effectiveness—with a visible cadence and a sense of urgency—that are conveyed across the enterprise and course corrections to be made as needed to accomplish the pre-set goals; and
7. A plan for communication and reinforcement of the desired attributes of the change through training, leadership activities, performance reviews, and ongoing continuous improvement programs.

Then, in Recommendation 2 of Report 3, issued early in 2019, the panel recommended the prompt establishment of a change-management leadership structure:

Those two earlier recommendations are still appropriate, and, in light of the progress that has been made, and to try to reduce the risk that this forward momentum might be lost, the panel offers the following more-specific recommendation for 2020:

Recommendation. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator should promptly designate a career senior executive as the accountable change management leader for the next several years. That person’s responsibilities should include development and dissemination of documents that operationalize and institutionalize the desired governance and management practices and culture change more generally. These documents should be released within 6 months. The change management leader should actively monitor progress toward institutionalization of these changes.

The panel envisions that the challenge of institutionalizing high-level governance and management changes—of driving those messages down into the entire enterprise workforce and adjusting processes and written guidance so that the desired culture becomes ingrained—will require effort from managers across the enterprise. So the role of the accountable change management leader is to motivate, delegate, and monitor, not to shoulder all the tasks. Additional thoughts about the change management leader’s responsibilities are found in the panel’s third report.⁶

The documentation for implementing culture change might cover at least the following topics:

• How should workers at various levels across the nuclear security enterprise (both contractors and federal employees) ensure that they are contributing to the concepts of “One NNSA” and “getting to yes”? How should workers at various levels across the enterprise contribute to the goal of better integration of efforts across the enterprise? What training, if any, will be offered beyond the current general course, taking into consideration the negative feedback about the current course that is reported in Chapter 1?
• How will NNSA surveil, on a regular basis, the entire enterprise to find governance and management problems and identify opportunities for continuous improvement? How should workers at various levels across the enterprise seek opportunities to weed out inefficiencies and improve processes? How will continuous improvement be incentivized and rewarded, and how will identified problems be resolved at the lowest appropriate level?
• How will progress on these initiatives be monitored, and what are their indicators of success? How will progress be communicated and celebrated?⁷

In the near term, NNSA should of course continue to communicate about change and implement governance and management reforms based on the action plan coming out of the focus groups, but written documentation will help ensure that implementation strategies are coordinated with each other and

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⁵ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Academy of Public Administration, 2019, Report 3 on Tracking and Assessing Governance, p. 2.

⁶ Ibid., p. 24.

⁷ See also footnote 4 above.

aligned with other organizational changes (e.g., the structural realignment). Also, a communication plan is important because the information needs of stakeholders and the messages that resonate with them change depending on where they are in the change process.

The timeline in this recommendation is critical, because the planning structure and documentation should be developed and put in place while stakeholder interest across the enterprise is high and while NNSA’s leadership slots are fully staffed.