June 16, 2003

Management of Sensitive Equipment at Selected Locations

The Department of Energy and its facilities' management contractors have come under increased scrutiny regarding the management of sensitive personal property. The Department defined sensitive property as equipment susceptible to misappropriation for personal use or readily convertible to cash. Generally, this includes equipment such as computers, personal digital assistants, cameras, and communications equipment. The Department has made a significant investment in sensitive property. For example, our analysis of inventory records at the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center disclosed that the acquisition cost of their active sensitive property inventories exceeded $152 million. Because of the importance of this issue, we initiated an audit at these sites to determine whether the Department was properly managing sensitive equipment.