	Background

NMMSS is the United States’ official nuclear materials tracking and accounting system. In its official response to the recommendations in our prior report, DOE stated that it did not concur with our recommendations and that it did not believe it would be cost-effective to delay its effort to transition from the existing system to the new system. However, because of DOE’s lack of basic planning, it does not know if the system will fulfill the needs of its major users or be cost-effective. These practices include (1) generating clear, complete, and accurate documentation throughout the system development process, (2) placing the software development under configuration management, and (3) ensuring that the system successfully completes acceptance testing prior to becoming operational. However, because DOE has not required the subcontractor to follow any of these practices for the replacement NMMSS, the Department does not know how much of the system development is completed and whether the part that is completed performs as required. As a result, the risk of system failure is inordinately high. Because little system documentation exists, and the contract does not require any interim deliverables that measure system performance, DOE does not know the status of the system development. DOE Does Not Plan to Adequately Test NMMSS

During acceptance testing, tests are performed to determine if a system will meet its hardware, software, performance, and user operational requirements. Address Correction Requested
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) progress in developing a new nuclear materials tracking system, focusing on: (1) DOE actions to implement previous GAO recommendations concerning the system; and (2) whether DOE is adequately addressing key system development risks.

What GAO Found

GAO found that: (1) DOE has not implemented any of the GAO recommendations regarding new system planning and analysis and has no plans to do so because it believes its planning is sufficient and delaying the system would lead to unnecessary costs; (2) DOE does not know if its new system will meet users' needs or be cost-effective; (3) DOE has not addressed the subcontractor's failure to document its system development process and to place its software under configuration management, or its failure to require acceptance testing before taking delivery of the system and plan for parallel operations of the new and old systems to check the new system's performance; and (4) the risk of system failure is high, since DOE does not know the status of the system development effort or whether certain system components will perform as required.