U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector General report on audit of acquisition of scientific research at Ames Laboratory

The Department awards grants and cooperative agreements and contracts to sponsor scientific research at colleges and universities. Compared to cooperative agreements, contracts, particularly management and operating contracts, often impose duplicative and/or unnecessary administrative and compliance burdens on a college or university. Since the Department bears the cost of those additional burdens, the authors audited the cost effectiveness of the Department`s sponsorship of research at Ames Laboratory under a management and operating contract with Iowa State University. The research conducted at Ames is of the type that Congress intended to be sponsored by assistance agreements, rather than contracts. Moreover, they found the contract for managing and operating Ames Laboratory caused micromanagement and unnecessary costs, most of which could have been avoided with a cooperative agreement. However, after completion of the field work, the Department announced initiatives to reduce or eliminate some compliance and oversight burdens associated with management and operating contracts, but did not opt to sponsor research under cooperative agreements. The authors are unable to determine the monetary impact because the initiatives have not been implemented. Nevertheless, they continue to believe that cooperative agreements, having fewer unique bureaucratic requirements, offer the potential for reducing administrative overhead.