U.S. Department of Energy 

Office of Inspector General 

Office of Audit Services 

Audit Report 

Cooperative Research and 

Development Agreements at the 

Department of Energy's Office of 

Science Laboratories

DOE/IG-0826 September 2009 
Department of Energy 

Washington, DC 20585 

September 30, 2009 

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY 

FROM: Gregory H. Friedman 

 Inspector General 

SUBJECT: INFORMATION: Audit Report on "Cooperative Research and 

 Development Agreements at the Department of Energy's Office 

 of Science Laboratories: 

BACKGROUND

Technology transfer, disseminating technology developed by the Department of Energy's 

laboratories to the general science community and the public, including non-Federal 

technology partners, and private firms, is one of the Department's top priorities. One of 

the ways in which this transfer is accomplished is through the use of Cooperative 

Research and Development Agreements (CRADA), a method established under the 1986 

Federal Technology Transfer Act. In 1989, the National Competitiveness Technology 

Transfer Act established the technology transfer concept as a Federal mission and 

authorized government-owned, contractor-operated laboratories to use CRADAs to 

facilitate the development of technology and transfer that technology to the private 

sector. 

The Office of Science is responsible for managing CRADAs at ten national laboratories. 

The Department's CRADA Directive (DOE O 483.1) and Manual (DOE M 483.1-1) 

delegates the responsibility for evaluating the CRADA processes and measuring CRADA 

performance to Federal site offices located at each laboratory. The site offices are 

responsible for ensuring that the laboratories obtain a final report documenting the results 

of research and any new inventions or technology, and forward a copy of the report to the 

Department's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). Ultimately, OSTI is 

responsible not only for preserving the scientific and technical information generated 

through a CRADA but also making this information readily available to the scientific 

community and to the public. 

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2007, the Department had a total of 697 CRADAs. Of this number, 

276 CRADAs were at the 10 national laboratories managed by the Office of Science, and 

of these, 196 or 71 percent, were at generated by Argonne National Laboratory 

(Argonne) in Argonne, Illinois; Brookhaven National Laboratory (Brookhaven) in Upton, 

New York; and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 

Given the priority which has been placed on transferring technology to the private sector, 

we initiated this audit to determine whether the Office of Science managed the 

Cooperative Research Agreement process in accordance with Department requirements. 

.
RESULTS OF AUDIT

The Office of Science generally managed the use of CRADA activities in accordance 

with Department requirements. However, Science had not always taken the steps 

necessary to ensure that the laboratories obtained final reports and forwarded the reports 

to OSTI. Since Argonne, Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge administered the majority of 

CRADAs managed by the Office of Science, we focused our evaluation on these three 

laboratories. 

The Department required the laboratories and their industry partners to produce a final 

report as a deliverable for each completed CRADA project. These activities are also 

required to send a copy of all final reports to OSTI for dissemination to the scientific 

community and to the general public. These reports are not mere symbols of the work 

product. Instead, they serve to memorialize the technical approach and accomplishments 

under the CRADA, which is a vital element in the effort to transfer the technology as 

effectively and expediously as possible. 

The three laboratories we visited had procedures to request final reports from researchers 

and included a requirement for a final report in agreements with industry partners. Yet, 

only one of the three laboratories had procedures to transmit final reports to OSTI. 

Procedural requirements notwithstanding, our analysis showed that a disturbing 

proportion of the final reports were never received and, even when they were received, 

they were not provided to OSTI. The results of our analysis are displayed in the 

following table. 

FINAL CRADA REPORTS 

FYs 2004 - 2008 

CRADAs 

Completed 

Final CRADA 

Reports 

Obtained 

Reports Sent to 

OSTI 

Argonne 50 11 2 

Brookhaven 17 8 0 

Oak Ridge 71 64 63 

Totals 138 83 65 

On its face, this analysis would suggest that Oak Ridge National Laboratory routinely 

submitted final reports to OSTI. However, only seven of the final reports had actually 

been transmitted to OSTI prior to the start of our audit. The average number of days 

from publication of the final report to receipt by OSTI was 820 days for the 63 reports 

forwarded by Oak Ridge. 

PERFORMANCE MONITORING

The Federal site offices were not consistently overseeing CRADA activities at the three 

national laboratories we reviewed. For example, none of the site offices had established 

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goals and measures to evaluate how effectively their respective laboratories obtained 

final reports and sent the reports to OSTI. Also, the Argonne and Brookhaven Site 

Offices had not performed detailed reviews of the CRADA process at their laboratories; 

an activity which could have disclosed the lack of final reports obtained and sent to 

OSTI. Accordingly, neither site office knew that their laboratories' procedures for 

obtaining final reports were not effectively implemented. Further, neither site office 

knew that their laboratories lacked policies on forwarding reports to OSTI. In fact, the 

Brookhaven Site Office was unaware of the requirement to forward final CRADA reports 

to OSTI. 

To its credit, in June 2007, the Oak Ridge Site Office identified both of these issues 

during its biennial review of Technology Transfer. As a result of these findings, the Oak 

Ridge Site Office required the Laboratory to submit a corrective action plan, which 

included holding back some funding until the final CRADA reports were obtained. 

While the corrective actions taken may account for the relatively better performance of 

Oak Ridge in receiving final reports from researchers, it did not improve the Laboratory's 

performance in forwarding the final CRADA reports to OSTI in a timely manner. 

RESEARCH REPORT DISTRIBUTION IMPACTS

The Department has stated that accelerating the dissemination of research and 

development information serves to accelerate the pace of scientific progress itself. By 

not ensuring that its laboratories obtained and disseminated final CRADA reports, the 

Office of Science has not ensured that the scientific and technical information generated 

by laboratory research was available throughout the Department, as well as the scientific 

community and the public. This process serves, as well, to document new inventions and 

breakthrough technologies resulting from CRADA efforts and reduce redundant research 

by ensuring that historical information is widely disseminated. 

RECOMMENDATIONS

We recommend that the Deputy Director for Field Operations, Office of Science, direct 

the site offices to: 

1. Establish performance measures to assess the laboratories' performance in 

obtaining final CRADA reports and transmitting the reports to OSTI; 

2. Verify that the laboratories establish policies to require researchers to transmit 

final CRADA reports for all completed or terminated CRADAs; and, 

3. Periodically review whether the laboratories are receiving and promptly 

transmitting final CRADA reports to OSTI. 

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MANAGEMENT COMMENTS AND AUDITOR RESPONSE

Management agreed with our findings and generally concurred with our 

recommendations. However, management did not agree that performance measures 

should be implemented at this time. Instead, management stated that by following our 

other two recommendations, the laboratories would be in compliance with Departmental 

requirements, without necessitating the creation of additional performance reporting 

requirements. While we agree that additional attention paid to this issue by the site 

offices would be beneficial, we continue to believe that performance measures would 

better focus the laboratories on the importance of receiving the reports from researchers 

and sending the reports to OSTI. 

An exit conference was held with Office of Science Management on September 29, 2009. 

Attachments 

cc: Deputy Secretary 

 Under Secretary of Energy 

 Chief of Staff 

 Manager, Argonne National Laboratory Site Office 

 Manager, Brookhaven National Laboratory Site Office 

 Manager, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Site Office

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Attachment 1 

SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY

The audit was performed between October 2008 and July 2009 at Argonne National 

Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois; Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, 

Tennessee; and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. We also 

requested information from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information in Oak 

Ridge, Tennessee. To accomplish our audit object, we: 

• Reviewed laws, regulations, and Departmental Directives related to Cooperative 

Research and Development Agreements (CRADA); 

• Selected and reviewed sample Cooperative Research and Development 

Agreements active during Fiscal Years 2004 through 2008 at the Argonne, 

Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories; 

• Confirmed the Laboratory submissions with the Office of Scientific and Technical 

Information (OSTI); and, 

 

• Held discussions with responsible Departmental and Laboratory personnel. 

We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted Government 

auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained 

provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit 

objectives. Accordingly, the audit included reviews of Departmental policies, 

procedures, and performance measures related to the Department of Energy's 

(Department) management of CRADA. We assessed performance measures in 

accordance with the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and concluded 

that the Department had not established performance measures related to the receipt of 

final CRADA reports and transmission of final CRADA reports to OSTI. Because our 

review was limited, it would not necessarily have disclosed all internal control 

deficiencies that may have existed at the time of our audit. We used computer-processed 

data and performed reliability tests of such data as necessary to achieve our audit 

objective. 

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Attachment 2 

RELATED REPORTS

• Dissemination of Research from the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, 

(DOE/IG-0526, September 2001). The Environmental Molecular Sciences 

Laboratory (EMSL) did not always collect and forward the results of nonproprietary 

research to Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). The report found 

that the EMSL had not received research results or deliverables for 94 of 153 

completed research projects, and had not forwarded to OSTI 640 of 700 deliverables 

that EMSL did receive. This occurred because the management system did not 

identify deliverables that were due and performance measures were not used to judge 

progress made in collecting and forwarding deliverables to OSTI. Further, contractor 

and Department of Energy (Department) officials claimed that they did not fully 

understand the requirements for sending research results to OSTI. The report 

concluded that research results from nonproprietary research must be promptly 

collected and disseminated to ensure that taxpayers benefit from their investment in 

the EMSL. 

• Peer-Reviewed Scientific Literature Generated at the Department's Light Sources, 

(DOE/IG-0520, August 2001). The audit found that peer-reviewed literature 

generated from work conducted at the Department's light sources was not available 

for public dissemination at the OSTI. Specifically, the laboratories had failed to 

notify OSTI of available journal articles and OSTI did not have a systematic 

methodology to reconcile the journal articles in its database with those actually 

published in journals. Based on the Department's objectives for the OSTI program, it 

was clear that researchers may not have had full and ready access to valuable 

government-sponsored research information and that scientific advancement was not 

fully promoted. 

• Allegations of Conflict of Interest Regarding Licensing of PROTECT by Argonne 

National Laboratory, (DOE/IG-0819, August 2009). This special report reviewed 

allegations that an exclusive technology licensing agreement by Argonne National 

Laboratory (Argonne) was tainted by inadequate competition, conflicts of interest, 

and other improprieties. Our review found that despite a contractual requirement that 

it provide "fairness of opportunity" in its licensing activities, Argonne did not list the 

licensing opportunity on its web site relying instead on personal knowledge of 

Laboratory employees when deciding what firms would be provided the opportunity 

to compete for the exclusive PROTECT license; and that Argonne's actions to avoid 

or ameliorate conflicts of interest prior to awarding the license were less than 

satisfactory. 

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Attachment 3 

. 

7 
Attachment 3 (continued) 

8 
IG Report No. DOE/IG-0826

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