Nuclear Agency Needs to Improve Evaluation of Research Portfolio

The National Nuclear Security Administration has not fully developed a process to evaluate its full research and development portfolio and could risk uncertainty regarding the value those investments bring, according to an audit by the Government Accountability Office.

The audit calls attention to NNSA’s ongoing modernization effort.  The agency, which maintains the nation’s nuclear stockpile, has approximately 600 ongoing research and development projects totaling $300 million underway across various technological disciplines.

“NNSA has not fully developed and documented a process for evaluating the performance of [additive manufacturing development] R&D portfolio as a whole. As a result, NNSA may be using inconsistent measures across individual projects to evaluate performance,” the audit states. “Moreover, in evaluating the portfolio's performance, officials did not measure progress on long-term R&D goals and priorities. This could limit the agency's ability to determine the extent to which the portfolio provides value in the long term.”

Auditors, however, said NNSA otherwise did a good job meeting leading practices for managing federal research and development funding. NNSA fully followed or substantially followed five other leading practices: Developing and aligning short-and long-term R&D goals; develop an R&D portfolio by prioritizing and selecting projects that align; identifying and coordinating with stakeholders to develop the R&D portfolio; ensuring the R&D portfolio can adapt to changing goals and priorities, and using a portfolio-wide system to track progress of R&D.