[DOE LETTERHEAD]
February
28,
2005
The Honorable John T. Conway
Chairman
Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board
625 Indiana Avenue, NW Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20004-2941
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Commitment 4.3.2.1 in the
Department’s Implementation Plan for Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in
response to Board Recommendation 2002-1 requires the Department to establish a
schedule to develop, revise, approve, and issue software quality assurance
directives. In my letter to you on
October 31, 2003, I provided a copy of that schedule.
Revised DOE O 414.1C, Quality Assurance was scheduled to be issued
within the directives system by December 31, 2004. While the Department has made significant
progress in revising this Order and also in developing new DOE G 414.1-4, Safety Software Guide for use with 10 CFR 830 Subpart A, Quality
Assurance Requirements, and DOE
O 414.1C,
Quality
Assurance, these
directives will not be issued on the planned schedule. This is due primarily to the additional time
needed to resolve comments and reach agreement with all Program Secretarial
Offices. A decision on the open
non-concurrence relating to NQA-1-2000 is expected soon and will allow us to
issue the Quality Assurance Order revision and the new supporting SQA Guide by
April 2005. Issuance of these two directives
will complete plan Commitment 4.3.2.1.
Because of this delay, the
attached list has been revised to show the new schedule for revising other
directives to correctly reference the revised Order and new SQA Guide. These are minor changes being made to keep the
directives system internally consistent; these minor changes do not constitute
substantive direction related to SQA. The majority of these minor changes will
involve reference changes using the page change process. We will continue to actively involve the Board
staff in the directive revision process. Questions concerning this commitment may be
directed to me at (301) 903-8008 or Richard H. Lagdon at (301) 903-4218.
Sincerely,
Frank B. Russo
Deputy Assistant Secretary
Office of Corporate Performance
Assessment
cc:
John S. Shaw, EH-1
C. Russell Shearer, EH-1
Mark B. Whitaker, DR-1
Richard H. Lagdon, EH-31
Brenda C. Coblentz,
IM-21