NNSA Must Budget for More Staff: GAO

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the federal agency responsible for safeguarding the nation’s nuclear weapons as well as promoting anti-proliferation efforts, must do more to address recruitment and retention challenges.

That’s the takeaway from a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which reviewed the agency’s staffing practices after two earlier studies warned that the agency needed additional staff to fulfill its mission.

According to the report, NNSA’s planned budget requests through fiscal year (FY) 2026, including the current FY 2025 request, are about 200 positions below staffing levels identified in a 2020 study of the NNSA workforce. The agency currently has about 1,800 staff supervising over 55,000 federal contractors.

GAO says this “leaves a gap between NNSA's workload and the number of federal staff to manage the work.” The report also criticized NNSA leadership for not fully integrating workforce planning into its budget requests.

That understaffing is leading to further recruitment and retention challenges.

“Officials from the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation stated that the office has faced challenges retaining staff in science and other technical positions due to the overwhelming workload caused by not having enough staff,” stated the report.

A separate GAO report on NNSA contractors found that contractor attrition at NNSA spiked at higher rates than the federal government overall. The lengthy delay to approve contract changes for compensation and benefits was cited as a reason why.

It was not all gloom and doom. NNSA was applauded for taking some steps on hiring, including increased participation in recruitment and outreach events and offering incentive payments.

However, the agency was criticized for not capitalizing on those opportunities.

GAO says NNSA failed to regularly assess which recruiting events yield the most candidates. The agency also lacked a process to systematically analyze and share information about its recruitment and retention challenges to inform its actions, missing an opportunity to understand why staff leave the agency.

Recommendations

GAO made three recommendations:

·         The NNSA Director of Human Resources should collaborate with stakeholders to share and analyze information on recruitment and retention challenges agencywide.

·         The NNSA Director of Human Resources should regularly assess the results of NNSA's recruitment and retention actions using outcome-based performance measures

·         The Director of the NNSA Office of Learning and Career Management should establish a process to monitor offices' progress implementing actions to address the results of their Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) results.

NNSA agreed in principle with the recommendations.