Summary

Since its inception in 1988, the Environment, Safety, and Health Office's Site Representative Program has not provided the vigorous independent oversight originally envisioned. Staffing constraints have limited the program's coverage of Department of Energy (DOE) sites, and the office has lacked a systemic approach for using the site residents' observations to evaluate safety and health performance. In addition, DOE has not required line management to respond to the site residents' findings. As a result, line management has failed to adequately address some major safety and health issues cited by site residents, posing unnecessary risks to workers. In restructuring the program in 1992, the Environment, Safety, and Health Office made a number of improvements, but basic problems persist, such as staffing constraints. In addition, new problems further limit this oversight capability--the program's coverage of occupational health has ceased; the program has not set minimum training requirements for site representatives; and the site representatives are not spending enough time touring work areas to identify safety problems. Finally, the office's ability to resolve problems once they are identified is limited because of the absence of requirements spelling out how line managers should respond to findings.

GAO found that: (1) the DOE Office of Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) did not implement its plans for a nationwide inspectors program or develop a systematic approach for assessing line management's performance in areas affecting safety and health; (2) staff shortfalls prevented ES&H from monitoring contractors' safety and health performance; (3) ES&H staff received little guidance or training on how to conduct and report assessments; (4) the Site Resident Program did not require line management to respond to program findings or adequately address significant safety and health problems; (5) ES&H did not follow up to determine if line management had corrected problems because there was a lack of staff and guidance outlining followup responsibilities; (6) ES&H made such program improvements as covering all DOE sites, providing better guidance, evaluating line management's implementation of safety programs, and following up on findings to determine the adequacy of corrective actions; (7) despite such improvements and the development of a more systematic approach to monitoring field offices' and contractors' safety and health performance, the Site Representative Program has staffing shortages, program coverage of occupational health has ceased, and site representatives are not devoting the required time to identify safety problems; (8) ES&H has shifted its program's focus from compliance inspections to performance assessments because it believes that performance assessments will identify DOE and contractor program weaknesses that cause noncompliance; and (9) DOE field offices are responsible for monitoring compliance with safety and health standards, but they have not done so because of numerous problems and conflicts of interest.