August 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

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Evelyn Mullen: Significant changes, new challenges

Photo by Sandra Valdez

Whether you favor John McCain or Barack Obama in the coming presidential election, significant changes affecting national and homeland security, defense, energy, and environmental policy are in store with the coming change in the administration. What appears likely from the campaign rhetoric is that there will be new challenges in arms control and treaty verification, nonproliferation, and homeland security areas, with flat or declining nuclear weapons budgets.

The Laboratory has an incredible track record delivering solutions to national security problems in these potential growth areas. Historically, the Lab has contributed in so many ways. A few of the unique contributions that the Laboratory has made include inventing nuclear safeguards technologies that are now in use around the world, developing instrumentation for satellite nuclear explosions monitoring, inventing techniques for passive and active diagnostics for improvised nuclear devices, and developing algorithms and techniques to simulate infrastructure through the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center.

New challenges, growth in programs where the Laboratory has demonstrated success, scientific and technical excellence—What is daunting about change in this context? The biggest barrier to the Lab's success is learning how to work as a unified organization with a common set of goals and objectives. Opportunities can be lost simply by assuming that customers can wait while we add more and more hurdles to accomplishing our mission. We clearly need to comply with our contract, but we need to focus on effective and efficient execution of the mission at the same time. It cannot be one without the other. We need to be flexible with our workforce while supporting development and growth for personnel.

Change is good. Internal strife is not. Let's spend the next six months planning for transition to include effective and efficient execution of the mission.

—Evelyn Mullen, International and Applied Technology Division leader