The Office of Secure Transportation’s Agent Qualifications for Work Performance and Missions
June 15, 2023
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June 12, 2023
The Office of Secure Transportation’s Agent Qualifications for Work Performance and Missions
The Office of Secure Transportation (OST) has developed and implemented the Nuclear Materials Courier Basic Candidate Guide and the Federal Agent Job Analysis manual, both of which list all OST Federal Agent Nuclear Materials Courier qualification requirements and standards for agents to conduct missions. The OST utilizes the Qualification Tracking System, which is a web-based database designed to track qualification and currency records for OST employees. Department of Energy Order 243.1C, Records Management Program, requires that records management controls be present in electronic information systems to ensure the reliability, authenticity, integrity, usability, content, and context of Department records created or received in its business processes.
We initiated this inspection to determine if OST Federal Agents meet the conditions and qualifications needed to perform work required to support their mission.
We found that OST Federal Agents met conditions and qualifications needed to perform work required to support their mission. However, we did identify opportunities for improvement. We found that the OST Qualification Tracking System and Human Reliability Program records contained inconsistent annotations of some requirements. Additionally, we found that the OST Nuclear Materials Courier Basic Candidate Guide had not been updated to accurately reflect that training on a specific weapons system was no longer required for OST Federal Agents.
The issues we identified occurred, in part, because the OST has not updated the Qualification Tracking System since the organization had been anticipating the implementation of Learning Nucleus to track qualifications for Federal Agents. Additionally, the Human Reliability Program records did not contain reference to extensions given for drug and alcohol testing requirements. As of June 2022, the OST resumed drug and alcohol testing. Finally, the OST Nuclear Materials Courier Basic Candidate Guide requirements were not updated immediately. However, the OST has subsequently provided an updated guide that removed reference to the training no longer required.
To address the issues identified in this report, we have made one recommendation that, if fully implemented, should help ensure that OST policies and the training tracking system are accurate and current. Management agreed with our findings and recommendation and has implemented corrective actions that are consistent with our recommendations.