Summary

The Department of Energy (DOE), overseer of the nation's nuclear weapons program, runs a broad range of plants and laboratories to carry out research, development, and production. Given the potentially devastating consequence of radiological sabotage or terrorism, tight security is a must at these facilities. Accordingly, DOE spends nearly $1 billion annually to protect them. GAO reviewed DOE's practice of granting exceptions to the agency's safeguards and security orders. Approved exceptions have ranged from exceptions to administration requirements, involving, for example, the labeling or marking of classified documents, to more substantive exceptions involving the inventory or storage of special nuclear materials. This report (1) cites the number of exceptions that have been approved, (2) determines whether DOE's written policies and procedures for reviewing and approving exceptions have been followed, and (3) describes the kind of internal control system used for monitoring and following up on individual exceptions.

GAO found that: (1) DOE does not know how many exceptions it has approved because it has decentralized its handling of exception requests and does not have sufficient information to determine how many exceptions it has approved; (2) DOE used a contractor to attempt to identify DOE headquarters-approved exceptions and determined that it had approved 242 of 312 exception requests, but DOE did not validate or verify that count; (3) it could not determine whether DOE followed established procedures for reviewing and approving exceptions because of incomplete or unavailable records; (4) there is no database for monitoring and following up on individual exceptions; (5) DOE is unable to evaluate field offices' compliance with safeguards and security orders; and (6) DOE plans for an automated tracking system do not include an assessment of DOE information needs.