WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The peer review of the Over the Horizon threat assessment program, the GAO noted, was not conducted in a way consistent with established standards.
"The NNSA — semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy — has used a variety of established methods in its ‘Over the Horizon’ (OTH) initiative to assess potential proliferation threats, but the implementation of these methods had several limitations," the report, issued on Friday, stated.
Moreover, NNSA officials did not document the results as called for by established standards, the GAO added.
"NNSA officials did not document the rationale for selecting individuals for structured interviews to show that those selected provided a balanced range of views and were sufficiently knowledgeable," the report pointed out. "NNSA officials also did not have detailed records or analyses of these interviews."
Some reviewers told GAO that it was unclear how their comments had been incorporated into a 2012 Over the Horizon report.
"These limitations raise concerns about the quality of the analyses produced, and about the usefulness of the Over the Horizon initiative as it has been implemented so far as a planning tool in NNSA's Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN)," the GAO said.
In conducting any future proliferation threat assessments, through the Over the Horizon initiative or another process, NNSA should better implement established methods, including literature reviews, structured interviews, and peer reviews, the report said.
The US Government Accountability Office is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer money.
