Report: Disaster recovery planning falls short at weapons labs

The National Nuclear Security Administration has not provided effective oversight to ensure its three weapons laboratories have comprehensive planning and testing for disaster recovery, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.

"Until the agency fully implements a contingency and disaster recovery planning program for its weapons laboratories, it has limited assurance that vital information can be recovered and made available to meet national security priorities and requirements," auditors said in a report released Thursday.

In the absence of underground nuclear weapons testing, which the United States ended in 1992, NNSA relies on supercomputing at its three weapons laboratories -- Los Alamos in New Mexico, Lawrence Livermore in California, and Sandia in New Mexico and California -- to simulate the effects of changes to current weapons systems and to ensure military requirements are met.

GAO found the impact of a system outage is unclear because NNSA and the laboratories have not adequately planned for such disruptions.

While all three labs had contingency plans, none were fully tested between December 2009 and December 2010, GAO's review period. At Sandia, officials told GAO that testing was not required, which "is contrary to [National Institute of Standards and Technology] guidelines, [Committee on National Security Systems] instructions, and [Energy Department] and NNSA policies," the report said.

Officials in NNSA's Office of the Chief Information Officer and other organizations were unclear about their oversight roles and responsibilities, GAO found.

"Unless each of the laboratories develops and sufficiently tests comprehensive contingency and disaster recovery plans . . . they face a risk of not being able to successfully recover their supercomputing operations after a service disruption," the report said.

GAO recommended NNSA develop and implement comprehensive contingency and disaster recovery plans that identify how the labs' supercomputing capabilities would be recovered following service disruptions and conduct disaster plan testing.

In a letter responding to the audit, NNSA's Gerald L. Talbot Jr., associate administrator for management and administration, concurred with GAO and said the agency will develop appropriate plans and conduct contingency testing.