The Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for some of the nation’s largest and most impressive scientific facilities. The agency’s nine national multiprogram laboratories employ more than 50,000 people and have annual operating budgets that exceed $6 billion. DOE estimates that more than $100 billion has been invested in the laboratories over the past 20 years. The laboratories’ work covers many scientific areas—from high-energy physics to advanced computing—at facilities located throughout the nation. Although DOE owns the laboratories, it contracts with universities and private-sector organizations for their management and operation—a practice that has made the laboratories more attractive to scientists and engineers. The laboratory contractors and DOE form unique partnerships at each site, but the Department remains responsible for providing the laboratories with their missions and overall direction, as well as for giving them specific direction to meet both program and administrative goals. The laboratories provide the nation with unique research and development (R&D) capabilities. Specifically, the laboratories enable researchers to work on complex, interdisciplinary problems that dominate current science and technology; permit the study of large-scale, high-risk problems that would be difficult for industry or universities to undertake; and provide unique research facilities for universities and industry to use while serving as focal points for research consortia. DOE’s laboratories have made wide-ranging contributions to defense and civilian technologies. For example, the laboratories have long produced and applied nuclear isotopes now used in thousands of diagnostic medical procedures daily. Safer cars and planes have evolved using computer crash simulation software developed at one laboratory. In 1994, the laboratories’ technological achievements received 25 of the 100 prestigious “R&D 100 Awards” given annually by R&D Magazine for the year’s most technologically significant products. Appendix I contains information on the staffing and funding, as well as the contractor and programmatic emphases, at each laboratory. When DOE was created in 1977, it inherited the national laboratories with a management structure that had evolved from the World War II “Manhattan Project,” whose mission was to design and build the world’s first atomic bombs. From this national security mission, the laboratories generated expertise that initially developed nuclear power as an energy source. The laboratories’ missions broadened in 1967, when the Congress recognized their role in conducting environmental as well as public health and safety-related research and development. In 1971, the Congress again expanded the laboratories’ role, permitting them to conduct nonnuclear energy research and development. During the 1980s, the Congress enacted laws to stimulate the transfer of technology from the laboratories to U.S. industry. DOE estimates that over the past 20 years, the nation has invested more than $100 billion in the laboratories. The 1990s have brought the most dramatic changes affecting the multiprogram laboratories, including the following. The Soviet Union’s collapse has reduced the nuclear arms race, raising questions about the need to maintain three separate weapons laboratories. The weapons laboratories, facing reduced funding in nuclear weapons research, have diversified their work in order to maintain their preeminent talent and facilities. Expectations are growing that all laboratories can and should help improve the nation’s economic competitiveness by working with industry to develop commercial technologies. As the laboratories have aged, concerns have arisen about their ability to maintain their skills in weapons programs. Major investments will be needed to provide up-to-date facilities and attract younger scientists. In light of the general budget austerity facing the federal government, a stable funding environment is no longer guaranteed, and the laboratories will increasingly need to show useful results. These and other forces have accelerated the laboratories’ diversification from defense and nuclear research. For example, the nuclear weapons laboratories—Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore—although created to design, develop, and test nuclear weapons, now devote less than half of their budgets to work on nuclear weapons. While these laboratories have been affected most dramatically by recent geopolitical changes, all DOE laboratories have been influenced by recent events and are redirecting their priorities. The federal government owns the facilities and grounds of the laboratories and funds the work but has relied on contractors to manage and operate them. These contracts generally run for 5 years; however, some of the laboratories have been run by the same contractor for decades, even since their inception in the early 1940s. The laboratories’ history of relative autonomy in daily research and operational management has led to concerns about their business practices as well as their attention to environmental, safety, and health issues. The objective of this report was to identify and examine the principal issues affecting the laboratories’ missions and DOE’s approach to laboratory management. The Congress has expressed considerable interest in these topics over the years, and our prior work at the laboratories, as well as other studies, has demonstrated that the laboratories’ missions and management are key concerns. This work was carried out as part of our general management review of the Department of Energy. Our work focused on DOE’s nine multiprogram laboratories because of their size and importance as national science and technology resources. We selected laboratory staff to interview by asking each laboratory to identify five programs that best represented its current contributions and future capabilities. (App. II contains the list of programs the laboratories identified.) From these programs, we selected three for assessment. This approach allowed us to examine both the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the laboratories. When collecting information, we strove to identify and assess mission and management issues from the experience of the laboratory managers responsible for directing the programs we had selected. Our work also focused on each laboratory’s technology transfer activities because of the increased national emphasis on using the laboratories to enhance U.S. technological competitiveness. We collected information about the laboratories’ missions and management from multiple sources with direct knowledge of these issues. At the laboratories, we interviewed managers who were responsible for the research programs we had chosen. We also held discussions with laboratory directors, senior officials responsible for technology transfer activities, and contractor representatives. At DOE, we interviewed program managers—Washington-based executives responsible for the research programs we had selected at the laboratories—and DOE field office managers, who oversee the Department’s contractors at the laboratories. To validate and refine our findings, we conducted two focus groups. The first group, which met with our staff in Chicago, consisted of one program manager from each of the nine laboratories. A second group, comprising program managers from DOE headquarters, met with our staff in Washington, D.C. To obtain independent views about the laboratories’ missions and management, we interviewed experts and industry representatives who were not associated with the laboratories. In addition, the National Academy of Public Administration assisted us in convening a panel of experts with backgrounds in (1) managing research in government and industry and (2) science and technology policy. Table 1 lists the panelists and their relevant professional experience. We also reviewed information and analyses from the laboratories, DOE, the Congress, industry, and independent experts, as well as legislative proposals and testimony, DOE documents, budget materials, and previous studies conducted by government and private organizations. In analyzing information, we compared and contrasted views about laboratory mission and management issues. We found considerable agreement among all types of respondents on both topics. To give the reader concrete illustrations of how mission and management issues were viewed, we have used quotations from sources we interviewed throughout this report. We obtained written comments on a draft of this report from DOE. The agency’s comments and our evaluation are presented in appendix III and at the end of chapter 5. We conducted our work from July 1992 through December 1994 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. As the manager of the laboratories, DOE has not clarified how the laboratory system can and should meet national priorities. Although research programs set laboratory priorities to meet their own goals, DOE has not used the laboratories as a coordinated network of talent and facilities to meet missions that cut across programs. This approach not only inhibits the development of clear and coordinated missions for the multiprogram laboratories but also fails to draw upon the laboratories’ expertise in multiple disciplines to solve complex, cross-cutting problems in science and technology. These concerns are not new. In the past, many advisory groups emphasized the need to clarify and redefine the laboratories’ missions. Although DOE recently developed a Strategic Plan and processes intended to integrate the Department’s missions and programs in five major areas, questions remain about DOE’s overall capacity to lead the national laboratories into new mission areas. Each national laboratory must have clearly defined, specific missions which support the over-arching missions of DOE to ensure the best technical and management performance and the greatest value to the nation. Only with clear missions, experts believe, can implementation strategies or “road maps” be developed that describe how each mission will be accomplished and guide each organization’s day-to-day operations. have not seen crisp, specific mission statements from individual laboratories, nor specific mission statements that would cover all DOE’s laboratories. Furthermore, DOE has not been able to describe the mission of the laboratories, nor are the laboratories’ missions defined in any piece of legislation. . . .It is not possible to run a $6 billion organization without specific mission statements. Laboratory managers we spoke with were also concerned that the Congress, DOE, and the laboratories do not share a “common vision” of the laboratories’ missions. Such a common vision among the key “stakeholders” is crucial if the laboratories are to use their resources most effectively to support departmental programs and national goals—the main purpose of the laboratories’ existence. Developing clear and more coordinated missions is particularly important, given the growing expectation that the laboratories will work together toward achieving national security, energy, environmental, and commercial technology goals. (Ch. 4 contains the opinions of our panel of experts on suitable missions for the national laboratories.) The responsibility for developing the common vision rests with DOE.