October 25, 2011

The National Nuclear Security Administration Global Threat Reduction Initiative's Contract Administration

The National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation established the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) in 2004 as a vital part of the effort to combat nuclear and radiological terrorism.  GTRI's mission is to reduce and protect vulnerable nuclear and radiological material located at civilian sites worldwide.  Although much of the GTRI mission and scope is performed by the Department of Energy's national laboratories, NNSA also executes a portion of its GTRI mission directly through small business and foreign contracts.  As of January 2011, the GTRI program had 20 active small business and foreign contracts totaling $272 million.  We found that, overall, NNSA established a system of controls to manage its GTRI contracts.  In particular, GTRI personnel verified contract deliverables, employed multiple monitoring techniques, and reviewed contract costs.  For example, GTRI representatives stated that they conducted site visits approximately every six weeks for one of the large foreign contracts we reviewed.  We also concluded that NNSA had a process in place to review contract costs for allowability, allocability, and reasonableness.

Topic: National Security & Safety