CHEMICAL SAFETY BOARD

Realigned Management Faces

Serious Challenges

Statement for the Record by

David G. Wood, Associate Director,

Environmental Protection Issues,

Resources, Community, and Economic

Development Division

United States General Accounting Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, Housing and

Urban Development, and Independent Agencies,

Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate

To Be Released

at 9:30 a.m. EDT

Wednesday

April 12, 2000

GAO/T-RCED-00-147
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

We appreciate this opportunity to provide a statement for the record for use in the

Subcommittee’s hearing on the fiscal year 2001 budget request for the Chemical Safety

and Hazard Investigation Board (the Board), an independent agency. Currently in its

third year of operation, the Board’s mission is to enhance the health and safety of the

public, workers, and the environment by determining the causes of accidental chemical

releases and using these findings to promote preventive actions by the private and public

sectors. The authorizing statute provides for five Board members, including a

chairperson, all appointed by the President. The staff includes investigators, attorneys,

and program analysts. The Board is required to submit its budget request to the

Congress and the Office of Management and Budget concurrently. For fiscal year 2001,

the Board has requested $9 million, an increase of $1 million over the prior year’s

funding. However, the President’s Budget requests $8 million for the Board.

Mr. Chairman, our statement is based on ongoing work for you and Senator Lautenberg.

As agreed with your offices, this work is focused on determining the status of the

Board’s (1) organization; (2) operations; and (3) efforts to update and develop plans,

policies, and procedures for accomplishing the Board’s mission. Our statement today

reflects our work to date and includes information supplementing our recent testimony

for the House Appropriations Committee.1We expect to complete our work and issue a

final report in June 2000.

In summary, to date we have found the following:

• The Board is currently operating under a significantly different organizational

structure than was in effect during most of its first 2 years of operation. This new

structure requires a majority vote of the Board members for substantive management

decisions and delegates some specific responsibilities, such as personnel matters, to

1

Chemical Safety Board: Recent Organizational Changes and Status of Operations (GAO/T-RCED-00-101,

Mar. 2, 2000).
2

individual Board members. The current structure represents an interim solution to

address two governance issues: the lack of an appointed chairperson since January

2000 and disagreements concerning the roles of the chairperson and Board members.

During the first 2 years of operation, the Chairman had individually made substantive

management decisions. In addition, the Board has implemented an organizational

realignment that dedicates an increased proportion of the Board’s staffing resources

to its investigations and safety programs, rather than supporting activities. However,

only 7 of the 17 investigative and safety positions are currently filled because of,

among other things, difficulties in recruiting qualified staff.

• In terms of operations, the Board has made minimal progress in addressing the

backlog of incomplete investigations that existed as of April 1999, when we last

reported on the Board to this Subcommittee.2 Specifically, since then, only one of

nine outstanding investigations has been completed, and no new investigations were

initiated. Most of the Board’s current operations and plans are directed at completing

its backlog of investigations and the related policies and procedures that support

investigations. The Board also plans to initiate two new investigations and one as yet

undefined safety study in fiscal year 2000.

• The Board has made some progress in developing needed plans, policies, and

procedures, such as those for awarding and managing contracts. However, all of the

Board’s larger contracts ($100,000 or more) were executed before the current

contracting policies and procedures were established. According to Board officials,

the agency has received limited benefit from some of these contracts. For example,

the Board is not currently using--and may never use--an information system that cost

about $636,000 to develop. Also, the interim criteria for selecting incidents to

investigate are not yet ready for use, and the Board plans to continue to work with

external stakeholders representing companies, employees, and the public to refine

the process for selecting incidents to investigate. We believe that the Board’s initial

steps since the management realignment appear to be appropriately targeted to

2

Chemical Safety Board: Status of Implementation Efforts (GAO/T-RCED-99-167, Apr. 29, 1999).
3

addressing the Board’s key problems. However, the success of these steps continues

to be hampered by difficulties in hiring and retaining investigators.

Background

Chemical incidents--the accidental release of toxic and hazardous chemicals--occur

frequently and often have serious consequences. However, according to Board officials,

reliable national statistics on the number of accidents, injuries, and deaths do not exist.3

The Board is an independent agency created under the Clean Air Act Amendments of

1990.4The act directs the Board to (1) investigate and report on the circumstances and

the probable causes of chemical incidents resulting in a fatality, serious injury, or

substantial property damages; (2) recommend measures to reduce the likelihood or the

consequences of such accidents and to propose corrective measures; and (3) establish

regulations for reporting accidental releases.

The Board has no enforcement authority and a very limited regulatory role. According to

a relevant legislative committee report, the Board is modeled after the National

Transportation Safety Board, which retained the lead role in investigating transportationrelated chemical incidents.

The Board is to consist of five members, including a chairperson, appointed by the

President and confirmed by the Senate. The chairperson is the Chief Executive Officer

(CEO) of the Board. As of April 2000, the Board has four members but does not have an

appointed chairperson.

To accomplish its primary mission, the Board has conducted both full-scale

investigations of chemical accidents as well as limited investigations, called reviews. In

our April 1999 statement for the record before this Subcommittee, we identified a

3

In 1999, the Board compiled statistics from five federal databases, which indicated that about 60,000

chemical incidents occur each year, resulting in about 2,300 injuries and more than 100 deaths. However,

the Board recognizes there are serious limitations with these statistics and is developing a plan to

determine a more reliable estimate.

4

The Board did not become operational until 1998 because of funding constraints.
4

backlog of incomplete investigations. Furthermore, we determined that significant

portions of the Board’s actual and planned resources were dedicated to activities, such

as external relations, that did not directly support the conduct of its investigations.

Status of the Board’s Organization

Recently, the Board changed its management responsibilities and functional alignment to

address, among other things, conflicts that had arisen over the roles and responsibilities

of the Board members. Specifically, in December 1999 and January 2000, the Board

developed interim solutions to important organizational issues regarding the roles and

the management responsibilities of the Board members. In addition, changes in

functional alignment made in 1999 and early 2000 increased the proportion of staffing

resources to be allocated to the Board’s primary mission of conducting investigations

and reduced staffing allocated for other activities, such as external relations and

information technology.

Conflicts Arose Over the Roles and

the Responsibilities of Board Members

In 1999, the Chairman and the other members of the Board disagreed over their

respective roles and responsibilities for managing the agency. In essence, the Chairman

asserted that he had sole control over many significant agency decisions, while the other

Board members believed that making these decisions was the collective responsibility of

the Board. Consequently, the Board members did not necessarily support the actions

taken by the Chairman. For example, they were concerned about the initial fiscal year

2001 budget request the Chairman had sent to the appropriations committees in October

1999 that would have doubled the Board’s funding to $16 million.5 In addition, according

to a Board directive, the Chairman and the Chief Operating Officer did not comply with

requests from the other Board members for contracting documents that they wanted to

5

On November 16, 1999, the Board members sent a letter to the appropriations committees to state their

reservations about the budget request and ask that the Chairman’s request be disregarded.
5

review in order to identify the goods and services that had been provided under the

contracts.6

The Board members asked the agency’s General Counsel to provide a legal opinion on

the roles and the responsibilities of Board members. In an August 1999 memorandum,

the agency’s Office of General Counsel concluded that, for a number of important agency

functions, there should be at least some amount of shared responsibility between the

Chairman and the other Board members. For example, the memorandum concluded that

while the Chairman and his staff were responsible for preparing the agency’s budget

request, it must be approved by the full Board before being transmitted to the Congress

and OMB. Similarly, the memorandum stated that while the use and the distribution of

the agency’s funds for contracting purposes falls within the scope of the Chairman’s

administrative functions, the exercise of this authority is subject to the oversight of the

other Board members.

In October 1999, the Board members accepted the General Counsel’s opinion, but the

Chairman requested further legal clarification before implementing the opinion. The

Chairman interpreted the Board’s authorizing statute as giving him authority, as CEO,

over a number of agency functions, including all budget and contracting issues, subject

to review only by the President and the Congress. In November 1999, the Board

members requested an opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel

on the legal accuracy of the General Counsel’s memorandum and agreed to be bound by

the opinion.7

In addition, on December 1, 1999, the Chairman also requested that the

Office of Legal Counsel review the Board’s authorizing statute to determine the precise

roles and responsibilities of the chairperson and the Board, and he agreed to be bound

by the Office’s conclusion. On the same day, the Chairman and the Board members

developed an agreement specifying the interim measures to be taken until the

6

The former Chairman told us that he did not agree with the Board members’ assertion that they were

denied access to contracting files.

7

The former Chairman told us that prior to the November 1999 letter, he sought assistance from White

House officials to help resolve the matter. The officials referred him to Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
6

Department of Justice provided its legal opinion. This agreement expanded the roles and

the responsibilities of the Board members.8

The Board’s disagreement about its governance became a matter of public record,

reported in newspapers and periodicals. In January 2000, the Chairman submitted his

resignation as Chairman and CEO, effective January 12, 2000, but retained his position as

a Board member. The President has not appointed a new chairperson, and the Board is

currently operating without a chairperson and CEO.

On January 14, 2000, the Board members established and implemented interim operating

procedures that delineate their roles and responsibilities whenever the position of

chairperson is vacant. The procedures delegate specific responsibilities, such as

personnel matters and allocating resources, to individual Board members. In addition,

the procedures identify the specific responsibilities, including developing budgets and

awarding contracts exceeding $10,000, that require a majority vote of the Board

members for approval.

Current Functional Alignment Emphasizes

Investigations, but Many Positions Are Vacant

During fiscal year 1999 and the early part of fiscal year 2000, the Board made

organizational changes to better carry out its mission. Among other things, the Board

increased the proportion of staffing resources to be allocated to its investigative

function. However, because of difficulties in recruiting qualified staff, many vacancies

exist in the Office of Investigations and Safety Programs. The Board also shifted several

key personnel. The former Chief Operating Officer has been assigned to an interim

position of special assistant to a Board member, and the General Counsel is assuming the

8

On December 1, 1999, Senator Lautenberg sent a letter to the Board stating that his understanding of the

statute creating the Board was that it intended the Board as a whole to direct and approve the executive

and administrative functions performed by the chairperson.
7

position of Chief Operating Officer in addition to his legal responsibilities. Also, on

February 2, 2000, the Board named a staff member to the position of Director of the

Office of Investigations and Safety Programs.

Increased Resources Allocated for Investigations and Safety

Currently, the Board has 24 staff, including the 4 Board members and a special assistant

to the Board. The Board expects to grow to a staff of 40 by the end of fiscal year 2000,

with almost all of the growth in the areas of investigations and safety. Table 1 identifies

the Board’s offices and staffing allocations, both current and planned.

Table 1: The Board’s Current and Projected Staffing Levels, by Functional Office, as of April 7, 2000

Office

Current

staffing

Projected

staffing by the

end of fiscal

year 2000

Board members and staff 5 7a

Chief Operating Officer 1b2

Investigations and Safety Programs 7 17

General Counsel 3b3

External Relations 2 2

Information Technology Services 2 4

Administration 4 5

Total 24 40

a

Currently, the Board has four members and one special assistant. Projected staffing includes the fifth Board member as provided

by the Board’s authorizing statute.

b

The head of the Office of General Counsel also serves as the Chief Operating Officer. This individual is included only in the staffing

allocated to the Office of General Counsel.

The projected staffing differs markedly from the staffing associated with the Board’s

budget request for fiscal year 2000. Specifically, in February 1999, the Board expected

to grow to a staff level of 60 by the end of fiscal year 2000, compared with current plans

to grow to 40 staff.9In addition, last year a greater proportion of staff was planned for

organizational units that did not directly support the Board’s investigative mission. For

example, last year, 33 percent of the Board’s projected staffing resources at the end of

9

The Board’s budget request for fiscal year 2000 was $12.5 million. However, the Congress provided $8

million for fiscal year 2000. This amount does not support the planned staffing growth to 60 staff.
8

fiscal year 2000 was allocated to investigations and safety programs, compared with the

current projections of 43 percent. Currently, the Board plans to allocate two staff to the

Office of External Relations compared with the planned allocation of nine staff a year

ago.

Vacancies Exist in the Investigations Area

As shown in table 1, 10 of the 17 positions planned for the Office of Investigations and

Safety Programs are vacant. Six of the positions are for investigators, and the other

vacancies are for two program analysts, one library/researcher, and one administrative

assistant. Board officials told us that the vacancies exist because of recruitment

difficulties and the loss of two investigators. According to the Board, potential recruits

with the requisite chemical safety skills--primarily from the oil and chemical process

industries--are highly paid and typically located in areas far from Washington, D.C.

Board officials said that it has been difficult to get prospective staff to relocate. In

addition, the Board has found that it takes 6 months or longer to recruit and hire staff.

This time frame for hiring staff is longer than the Board anticipated. Moreover,

according to Board officials, one investigator resigned and another was terminated.

The newly constituted Board has stated its intent to focus on personnel management

issues in fiscal year 2000. The Board will concentrate on retaining and retraining current

staff and on hiring and training qualified professional staff. Specifically, the Board has

identified development of hiring and training plans as priorities for fiscal year 2000.10 The

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) approved the Board’s March 17, 2000, request to

reinstate through December 2000 special hiring authority (termed Schedule A) that the

Board had been granted previously. According to Board officials, this special hiring

authority, which it had until December 31, is typically granted to new federal agencies

for a limited time period and expedites the hiring process.

10As of March 2000, the Board has identified eight priorities for fiscal year 2000. The other six

priorities--completing three investigative reports, revising its investigation protocol and incident selection

criteria, and initiating new investigations--are discussed in the following sections.
9

In its letter to OPM requesting special hiring authority, the Board stated that it had an

urgent need to expedite the hiring of investigative and safety personnel to complete its

work backlog. The Board’s letter stated that with some of its investigations more than 2

years old, it is under pressure from the Congress, stakeholders, and the public to

complete the eight outstanding investigations as soon as possible. The letter

acknowledged that the Board could face serious consequences, including the possible

loss of funding, if it does not hire the additional staff needed to make substantive

progress on its investigative backlog.

In its fiscal year 2001 budget request, the Board acknowledged that it may not be able to

achieve its fiscal year 2000 hiring goals. The Board has also acknowledged that the

governance problems and the management difficulties stemming from them contributed

to staff turnover.11 In addition, the Board believes that more initiatives than the agency

could effectively handle were undertaken hastily in its first year of operation in an effort

to quickly demonstrate that the Board was meeting its congressional mandate.

Status of the Board’s Operations

The Board has not made progress in addressing its investigations backlog this past year

and has not initiated a new investigation since March 1999. In addition, the more limited

review program was terminated because of problems encountered in performing these

reviews. The Board plans to initiate two investigations in fiscal year 2000 and four or

five investigations each year beginning in fiscal year 2001. Similarly, in fiscal year 2000

the Board plans to initiate a safety study to better understand the nature and causes of

specific safety problems that are beyond the scope of any one particular incident under

review and another safety study next year. Also, contracting activities have primarily

supported information technology and investigations, but according to Board officials,

the agency has received limited benefits for some of its contracts. To avoid contracting

for work of limited utility, the Board decided to require a majority vote of the Board

11In addition to the loss of two investigators, Board officials said that five staff from other offices have

resigned from the Board.
10

members to execute small as well as large contracts—that is, approval is required for

contracts exceeding $10,000.

Progress Has Been Slow in Initiating

and Completing Investigations

The Board investigates accidental chemical releases resulting in a fatality, serious injury,

or substantial property damage. These investigations often involve extensive site visits,

evidence collection, and analytical work. The Board started five full-scale investigations

in 1998 and six in 1999, although none have been initiated since March 1999. Of the 11

investigations, 3 from 1998 have been completed. One report has been completed since

March 1999.

Draft reports are in process for three investigations that were started in March 1998,

April 1998, and March 1999. Completion of these reports by September 30, 2000,

represents three of the Board’s eight priorities for fiscal year 2000. The Board has not

determined what decisions it will make concerning the other five outstanding

investigations. Alternatives include developing investigative reports, issuing summary

reports, or concluding the investigations without reports. In addition to the personnel

issues discussed above, the Board believes one of the causes of the investigations

backlog was an over reliance on contractors to investigate accidents. According to the

Board, this over reliance on contractors resulted in some poor investigations and reports

because of insufficient Board staff or inadequate procedures to monitor the contractors’

personnel to ensure their activities met the Board’s investigative needs.

In terms of future investigations, the Board plans to initiate two investigations during

fiscal year 2000 and four or five investigations each year beginning in fiscal year 2001.
11

Review Program Has Been Terminated

The more limited review program was developed to provide information to prevent

future incidents by using an approach that was less resource-intensive than full

investigations. The protocol for these reviews provided for a limited, office-based review

of investigative reports prepared by the organizations that responded to the incident.

The Board initiated a total of 23 reviews in 1998 and 1999. However, Board officials told

us that they effectively terminated this program in July 1999 when they decided to add

the factual data about these reviews to an existing incidents database maintained by the

Board and that the program was officially terminated in September 1999. This decision

was made because of problems encountered in performing these reviews, including the

longer-than-anticipated time spent in collecting the information and drafting the reports

as well as the possibility of duplicating work done by other government agencies.

Safety Studies Planned

Although they are not among the Board’s eight identified priorities for fiscal year 2000, 6

percent of its fiscal year 2000 funding—$488,000—and seven percent of the Board’s

budget request for fiscal year 2001—$670,000—are allocated for special safety studies

and technical guidance. The Board plans to use safety studies to better understand the

nature and causes of specific safety problems that are beyond the scope of any one

incident under investigation. The Board plans to initiate one safety study in fiscal year

2000 and another in fiscal year 2001. As of March 2000, the Board had not selected the

study to be initiated this fiscal year, but officials said it would likely evolve from one of

the three investigations to be completed in fiscal year 2000. Board officials said that

safety studies selected would likely stem from research needs identified in

recommendations developed by the Board in its investigative reports. They indicated

they would receive, at a minimum, input from other parties to ensure the studies are

useful.
12

Limited Benefits for Some

Contracting Activities

Since it began operations in January 1998, the Board has obligated about $4.7 million to

16 contracts of $100,000 or more.12 A significant portion--$2.4 million--of these

contracting obligations have supported information technology, such as the creation of

data systems and databases, compared with $1.4 million for investigative support (see

app. I). These activities were contracted before the management alignments in

December 1999 and January 2000 and the establishment of contracting policies and

procedures in December 1999. Prior to the management alignment, contracting actions

were the responsibility of the former Chairman and the former Chief Operating Officer,

and the other Board members did not have a role in reviewing or approving contracts. In

addition, these contracts were made prior to being directed--in the House conference

committee report accompanying the Board’s fiscal year 2000 appropriations bill--to

spend the preponderance of its resources, including contract resources, on

investigations and safety instead of on information technology or external affairs.

According to Board officials, the agency has received limited benefits for some of its

contracting activities. For example, the Board is not currently using--and may never

use--the $636,000 Incident and Investigation Information System developed by Oak Ridge

National Laboratory in 1999 that would catalog information from the Board’s accident

investigations. The officials said that the investigators and safety program staff who

would use this system had limited input into its design. According to Board officials, the

system is overly complex and an off-the-shelf database may better meet the Board’s

needs. While the Board plans to formally evaluate the system to determine its value to

the Board, this evaluation is on indefinite hold because of higher priority work for fiscal

year 2000.

In addition, Board officials acknowledged that other contracting activities may be of

limited value to the Board, such as:

12Contracts for office space or telephone charges are not included.
13

• Baseline of Chemical Accidents. The Board spent more than $450,000 under two

contracts to develop a 10-year baseline of chemical accidents. However, the Board

believes these statistics have serious data quality limitations and is developing a plan

to determine a more reliable estimate of the universe of chemical accidents.

• Pressure Relief Systems. The Board paid about $326,000 for information on pressure

relief systems that are used in chemical processing operations. Board officials said

that the information from the study appears to be of limited use to them. A Board

member stated that while the contract was designed to assist the Board’s

investigators and safety staff in their work, the contract proposal was not reviewed

by the Board members or the safety and investigations staff for design, purpose, and

outcomes. As a result, the product is of lesser value than could have been attained if

input from the users and the Board members had been obtained. The Board member

said that the other pressing priorities have precluded them from completing their

review of the information provided under the contract. He said, however, that the

agency needs to develop procedures for the internal technical review of goods and

services provided to the Board under contracts.

• As discussed earlier, Board officials also believe that the agency relied too heavily on

contractors to investigate accidents, resulting in some poor investigations and

reports. They attribute this primarily to insufficient Board staff or inadequate

procedures to monitor the contractors’ personnel to ensure their activities met the

Board’s investigative needs.

In addition, given its limited productivity and workload challenges, we have questions

about the Board’s use of funds to develop an informational video demonstrating the

Board’s purpose and activities. To date, the Board has paid $80,000 of the $160,000

obligated in 1998 for the video. One Board member told us that he did not believe it was

appropriate to develop a video at this time. In response to our questions about the views
14

of the Board members on the need for a video, he said he would raise this issue at the

next meeting of the Board.

In January 2000, to ensure that future contracting activities contribute to their overall

goals, the Board approved interim operating procedures that require contracts exceeding

$10,000 be approved by a majority vote of the Board members. In addition, one Board

member is assigned the responsibility for supervising the use and expenditure of funds,

including authorizing contracts between $2,500 and $10,000. A Board member said that

this new policy will provide greater transparency of proposed contracting actions and

avoid contracting for work of limited utility to the Board. In addition, the Board is

changing the way it uses contracting support for its investigations. Rather than retaining

contractors to perform the investigations, the Board is contracting for specific expertise

or tests needed for investigations that are led by Board investigators.

Status of the Board’s Efforts to Update and

Develop Plans, Policies, and Procedures

In our April 1999 statement for this Subcommittee, we identified two concerns about the

Board’s actions.13 One concern related to the backlog of investigations and the fact that

the Board had not updated its initial business plan to reflect the backlog and examine

how to address this problem, for example, by reallocating existing and planned

resources. The second concern stemmed from the problems with contracting that

developed shortly after the Board began operations. We indicated the need for formal

procedures for its staff to follow in awarding and managing contracts. As discussed

earlier, the House conference committee report accompanying the Board’s fiscal year

2000 appropriations act directed the Board to spend the preponderance of its resources,

including contract resources, on investigations and safety instead of on external affairs

or information technology. This report also directed the Board to complete, by

December 31, 1999, an updated business plan, formal policies and procedures for

awarding and managing contracts, and formal procedures for selecting and performing

13See footnote 2.
15

investigations. The Board has made some progress in complying with these directives.

Specifically,

• On December 27, 1999, the Board issued formal written procedures for awarding and

managing contracts. Also, as discussed above, in January 2000, the Board approved

procedures that include requiring contracts exceeding $10,000 be approved by a

majority vote of the Board members.

• On December 27, 1999, the Board issued interim procedures for selecting incidents to

investigate and an interim investigative protocol for conducting accident

investigations. As of March 2000, the interim selection criteria are being reviewed

and thus are not ready for use in selecting incidents to investigate. The Board plans

to revise the process for selecting incidents to investigate, continuing to work with

stakeholders from industry, public interest groups, government agencies, and labor

unions. Similarly, the Board plans to revise its investigation protocol through reviews

with stakeholders and external experts on investigative practices. These efforts are

among the Board’s eight priorities for fiscal year 2000.

• The Board requested an extension of time in developing an update to its business

plan because of the former Chairman’s announced resignation from that position and

the related governance issues. This update will be accomplished by the development

of strategic and performance plans required by the Government Performance and

Results Act. On February 7, 2000, the Board provided a performance plan for fiscal

year 2001 along with its budget request for fiscal year 2001. The Board plans to

develop a strategic plan by September 2000.

Observations

The governance issues that arose in 1999 limited the Board’s ability to effectively address

the problems that we identified almost a year ago--the backlog of investigations and the

lack of key plans, policies, and procedures to guide this new agency. The Board’s initial

steps since the management realignments in December 1999 and January 2000 appear to
16

be appropriately targeted to addressing these issues. The priorities the Board has

established for (1) hiring and training staff and (2) completing investigations and key

policies and procedures to support the selection and conduct of investigations are

critical ones that the Board must accomplish to demonstrate that it is a viable agency

capable of accomplishing its important safety mission in an efficient and effective

manner. Along these lines, the Board’s decision to review and approve contracts appears

prudent given the amount of money that has been spent on contracting activities without

apparent direct or immediate benefit to the Board.

The Board is facing many challenges as it seeks to accomplish a number of important

tasks with a limited number of personnel to conduct them. While the Board plans to

provide more resources to its investigations and safety programs, it is not clear how the

backlog will be addressed or when the agency will be in a position to realistically initiate

any new investigations. The Board’s progress in these areas is limited by difficulties in

hiring and retaining investigators and the need to dedicate some of these resources to

other priorities, such as revising accident selection criteria and the investigation protocol

and developing its strategic plan. Finally, in our view, initiating a safety study this year

does not appear essential to the operations of the Board in the short run--as it seeks to

establish its credibility--and will divert resources from its priorities.

Scope and Methodology

To review the status of the Board’s efforts to carry out its mission, we reviewed

documents supplied by the Board related to its organization, planning, budgeting, and

programs; personnel data; and contract files. We also interviewed Board employees,

including Board members, attorneys, and investigators. We discussed the contents of

this statement with Board members, the Chief Operating Officer, and other Board staff,

who generally agreed with the facts presented. Based on our discussions, we made

revisions as appropriate to reflect the clarifications the Board requested. We conducted

our work between January and April 2000 in accordance with generally accepted

government auditing standards.
17

Contact and Acknowledgements

For additional information, please contact David G. Wood at (202) 512-6111. Individuals

making key contributions to this statement included Gregory Carroll, Harriet

Drummings, and Christine Fishkin.
18

Appendix I Appendix I

Chemical Safety Board Contracts

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has contracted with a

number of vendors since it became operational in fiscal year 1998 using contracts,

purchases orders, and agreements. The contracts, purchase orders, and agreements of

$100,000 or more (excluding those for office space and telephone charges) are identified

in table 2. The Board obligated about $4.7 million under these contracts in fiscal years

1998, 1999, and 2000 (up to March 1, 2000). Only one contract over $100,000 has been

executed in fiscal year 2000. As of March 1, 2000, total expenditures under these

contracts were about $3.5 million. The contracts in table 2 are categorized according to

(1) information technology, database, and network support; (2) investigative support;

and (3) other activities.

Table 2: Total Obligations and Expenditures from January 1998 Through March 1, 2000, For Contracts,

Purchase Orders, and Agreements of $100,000 or More

Vendor Description Total obligations Total expenditures

Information technology, database,

and network support

Oak Ridge

National

Laboratory

(ORNL)a b

Information Technology Infrastructure. Identify

functional requirements and develop the

Investigation and Incident Notification System to

capture information developed and collected from

investigations.

$658,000 $636,000

Tri-Data Establishment of chemical incident baseline and

database. Analyze and prepare a summary report

on 10 years of data from five federal agencies'

databases to establish a chemical incident

baseline.

350,000 350,000

ORNLa b Technical support. Assist the Board with library

and research work, and regulatory analyses.

Strategic Plan. Assist in the development of a 5-

year information technology plan.

332,000 60,000

AAC Associates Network/Helpdesk Support. Provide a senior

engineer and support specialist to cover helpdesk

support and local area network support.

308,000 39,000

Bell Atlantic Internet and Intranet web site. Provide one

dedicated staff to develop, manage, and

administer the web database.

231,000 223,000

Federal

Emergency

Management

Agency

Internet service. Host, update, and administer the

Board's web site and e-mail. Provide a 24-hour, 7

days-a-week communications center.

137,000 137,000
19

Vendor Description Total obligations Total expenditures

Bell Atlantic Helpdesk support. Provide helpdesk support and

local area network support.

$130,000 $116,000

General Service

Administration

Database support. Provide one dedicated database

administrator/developer to develop, manage and

administer database requirements, including

technical support.

120,000 51,000

Dun & Bradstreet Baseline study support. Assist the Board in

improving the data quality of the five databases

used to develop a universe of chemical incidents

for 1987 to 1996.

108,000 108,000

Subtotal $2,374,000 $1,720,000

Investigative support

ORNL a b Investigative support. Assist the Board in

conducting several investigation.

1,006,000 799,000

Battelle Investigative support. Assist the Board in

conducting the Sierra Chemical investigation in

Nevada.

410,000 385,000

Subtotal $1,416,000 $1,184,000

Other activities

ORNLa b Study. Develop training program and reference

materials on process pressure relief systems since

many incidents that occur are due to inadequate

assessment, design, and installation of these

systems.

300,000 326,000

Bureau of Public

Debt

Furniture, equipment and support. Provide

furniture and equipment in addition to technical

support services and organizational development.

255,000 33,000

Rowland

Productions

Informational video. Provide a video to publicize

the Board’s purpose and activities.

160,000 80,000

National Ground

Intelligence

Center

Software development. Develop a civilian version

of military intelligence software to help facilities

determine where safety systems were prone to

failure and how to best address the problems.

Initially planned as a multi-year effort, this contract

has been suspended.

100,000 100,000

FPMI

Communications,

Inc.

Resources support. Provide a full spectrum of

personnel management services, including but not

limited to, writing position descriptions and

preparing recruiting analyses and

recommendations.

100,000 19,000

Subtotal $915,000 $558,000

Total $4,705,000 $3,462,000

Source: Chemical Safety Board

Note: Dollar amounts rounded to the nearest thousand. Obligations over $100,000 for office space and telephone

charges are not included.

a

ORNL conducts work for the Board under one agreement with specific tasks. The Board has been unable to confirm

the costs associated with some of the tasks listed in the table. The Board has found discrepancies between the

monthly cost reports received from ORNL for work performed on specific tasks and the monthly billing amounts. It is

currently attempting to reconcile these differences. For example, expenditures appear to exceed obligations for the

task relating to the study on pressure relief systems, but actual expenditures have not yet been confirmed. Because

of these problems, on February 15, 2000, the Chief Operating Officer instructed ORNL to stop all work under the

agreement temporarily.

b

All expenditures are as of March 1, 2000, except for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is as of March 7, 2000.

(160523)
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