OBJECTIVE BASED ANALYSIS OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY MATERIAL CONTROL AND ACCOUNTABILITY POLICY

The Department of Energy (DOE) conducts programs relating to energy resources, national nuclear security, environmental quality, and science. Nuclear materials are employed in programs that fall under each of these four programmatic areas. In order to develop DOE policy for accounting and controlling nuclear materials that is both effective and flexible enough to be applied to programs across these four broad applications, policy must be an expression of clearly defined goals and objectives. Current DOE policy for materials control and accountability (MC&A) is an uncoordinated mixture of requirements ranging in nature from clearly worded global objectives to prescriptive requirements written to address site specific situations. This results in wasted efforts and in questionable effectiveness of MC&A programs because the policy is difficult to implement, audit, and defend. The situation is unacceptable as government and federal budgets decline and regulations increase. It is time for the DOE to analyze its policy, develop clear and concise goals for MC&A programs, and make these goals the basis for requirements. This paper presents an objective based analysis approach and examples of applying this approach to existing MC&A policy.