I must say that DOE is amongst the most f*ed up organizations I've ever worked with (as a supplier).
In the 90's, as the Cold War wound down and security was drastically loosened at many of the facilities, there was a sudden increase in asset loss -- or should I say in their euphamistic terms -- "unable to locate" situations. At one of our customer sites, the back gate was literally unmanned and it was eventually discovered that hundreds of items such as tools, laptops and video projectors had disappeared. I believe the total loss was over $40mil in that instance.
They also have a serious "NIH" problem and tend to spend $millions on reinvent-the-wheel projects where commercial solutions are already available in the private sector.
Sandia and Los Alamos are probably the worst managed of all DOE facilities from what I've seen and heard thus far.
Oh well...it's only money...OURS!
