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Emergency Operations and Continuity of Operations (2020 DOE transition)
| Book 2 - Issue Papers
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| Entire 2020 DOE Transition book As of October 2020 |
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) maintains a wide range of capabilities in the core areas of crisis operations, continuity programs, and emergency management.
The Office of Emergency Management (NA-40) is responsible for several critically important emergency management missions. DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is charged with coordinating the Department’s Emergency Management Enterprise for all-hazard response. The Office is currently focusing on one key mission area that will require transitional leadership attention and awareness.
Issue(s)
DOE has one (1) critically important ongoing emergency management mission focus:
NNSA’s Office of Emergency Operations coordinated tracking and updates across the DOE/NNSA complex. NNSA’s mission work has continued through the pandemic with minimal disruption. From nuclear weapons activities; to arms control and nonproliferation; to maintaining its support for naval nuclear propulsion, NNSA met critical timelines for program and major project deliverables while adhering to COVID health and safety requirements. NNSA is now conducting a detailed study of lessons learned during the pandemic for maximizing infrastructure and operational efficiency and effectiveness during future disruptive events.
Status
The Office of Emergency Operations continues to safeguard the health and safety of workers and the public; protect the environment; and enhance the security and resilience of the Department and the Nation by applying a whole-of-community approach to mitigate, prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from all-hazards emergencies.
Threat Assessment
Using a variety of open source and restricted distribution sources of information, emergency management specialists within NA-40 serve as subject matter experts at Biological Event Monitoring Team (BEMT) and Threat Working Group meetings. NA-40 provides critical analysis and data information into briefing up to 200 leaders and their staff for use in decision making related to the current COVID-19 emergency and the Department’s and NNSA’s response to the pandemic. In cooperation with public health and occupational medicine epidemiology experts, a weekly pandemic threat assessment is provided to the Threat Working Group and addresses risk from the virus to the DOE/NNSA complex. The focal point for threat assessment is the analysis and recommendation to senior leadership of emerging items of concern that may impact DOE/NNSA safe return to work in accordance with current policies, guidelines, and procedures. The NA-40 representative developed the National Capital Region (NCR) COVID-19 Phase Line Recovery Report to provide senior leadership with situational awareness regarding the attainment of return-to-work gating criteria. In total, NA-40 threat assessment products provide pandemic threat briefings for the 250+ members of the DOE Threat Working Group and DOE Threat Working Group Senior Executive Steering Committee. Additional topics include a weekly update on the effectiveness of vaccine development and of medical countermeasures, followed by a question and answer session to further address topics of specific interest or concern.
Safe Return to Work Analysis
NA-40 has continued developing and delivering the Weekly Reopening Reporting Criteria Stoplight Chart to DOE Leadership every Monday. The Stoplight Chart is based on the gating criteria outlined in the President’s Opening Up America Again Guidelines, which provides a status assessment on COVID-19 symptoms, cases, hospitalizations, state directives, mass transit, and dependent care for DOE and NNSA Headquarters and select Labs, Plants, and Sites. The purpose of the Stoplight Chart is to help inform and support DOE and NNSA leadership in determining each site’s phase transition decisions. To do so, the Stoplight Chart is presented to DOE and NNSA leadership every Tuesday at the Emergency and Incident Management Council (EIMC) meeting.
Lessons Learned
NA-40 leads the NNSA Recovery Team Working Group, which includes membership from NNSA HQ Offices and Field Element representation. The Working Group was formed to develop and implement the NNSA Phased Recovery and Re-Entry Plan and serve as a forum to raise awareness on common issues of concern related to the process at HQ and in the field at DOE/NNSA labs, plants, and sites. The Plan was developed by the Working Group and received final approval and signature by the NNSA Administrator on June 2, 2020. Once the Plan was signed and implemented throughout the Enterprise, the Working Group focused its efforts on sharing COVID-19 lessons learned from NNSA HQ and Field Offices and addressing medical, human resources, management and administration, and legal issues in light of the COVID-19 operational environment. The Working Group continues to meet every Friday to share COVID-19 Lessons Learned with NNSA HQ offices and field elements.
NA-40 is also working in close partnership with NA50 to support the NA-2 directed COVID-19 Lessons Learned for Enduring Organizational Improvement initiative. Currently, NA-40 is developing a draft project plan for this initiative, which is scheduled to begin in October 2020. The purpose of this initiative is to systematically evaluate our pandemic lessons learned as an Enterprise—to include those identified by the Office of Enterprise Assessments and the Energy Facility Contractor’s Group—and determine which lessons NNSA should apply during normal working conditions beyond the COVID-19 environment to enhance the efficiency, resiliency, and continuous improvement of the NNSA for the long term. As part of this initiative, four teams will be formed to evaluate the cross-cutting impacts to the NNSA mission, people, infrastructure, and governance and management framework. The top three lessons learned will be determined by each of the four teams for their respective areas and submitted for approval for incorporation into NNSA’s Annual Report to Congress in Spring 2021.
Senior Leadership Briefing (SLB)
NA-40 has taken the lead in generating and maintaining a very forward-leaning briefing document submitted to a large group of stakeholders to provide a high-level overview of DOE/NNSA actions, activities, and requirements in response to a situation or event requiring the engagement of the Emergency Response Organizations. Broken down into seven (7) Lines of Effort (LOE) that represent priority critical government and business functions (Safety and Security; Health and Medical; Energy; Communications; Transportation; HAZMAT; and Food/Water/Shelter) that are based upon the National Response Framework, the LOEs provide Senior Leadership with bottom line up front information needed to inform critical decisions in a format recognized across the interagency. Scalable and flexible, the SLB is tailored to each event to provide the Senior Leader information reflective of the requirements of the response and is currently being distributed each weekday in response to the current COVID-19 situation.
Milestone(s)
To ensure DOE/NNSA are best prepared to continue essential functions during the present COVID-19 pandemic, NNSA’s Office of Emergency Operations will continue to complete the following critical tasks.
| Milestone | Due Date |
|---|---|
| Develop and deliver the Weekly Reopening Reporting Criteria Stoplight Chart to DOE Office of Science | Every Monday |
| Conduct of Weekly NNSA Recovery Team Working Group meetings | Every Friday |
| DOE Headquarters COVID-19 status change from Phase 2 to Phase 3 |
Major Decisions and Events
Provide Introductory Leadership Briefings
As part of the transition process, briefings for the new DOE and NNSA leadership teams will be required to outline the Secretary’s responsibilities in the event of a nuclear incident or major disaster impacting the nation’s energy infrastructure.
Continue to Strengthen Emergency Management Processes and Procedures
- NA-40 is addressing recent findings from the COVID-19 Lessons Learned, which recommend refinement of emergency management processes and procedures. DOE Order 151.1D, Comprehensive Emergency Management System, was revised on 11 August 2016 to standardize and enforce DOE’s management and administration of the Emergency Management System complex wide. DOE Order 150.1X, Continuity Programs, is currently in the revision process. NA-40 is developing Emergency Relocation Group (ERG) and Devolution Emergency Response Group (DERG) training, scheduled for December 9, 2020. This training provides further opportunity to strengthen continuity preparedness through training of COVID-19 lessons learned and status of phased recovery for the Department’s Continuity personnel.
- Modernize the Consolidated Emergency Operations Center (CEOC). In line with the NNSA Strategic Vision (Mission Priority #5; Modernize the national security infrastructure), NNSA’s NA-40 team aims to modify and update the 24/7/365 existing watch office space to create an improved operational capability that can assist in meeting our national security missions today and into the future. A sequenced infrastructure improvement process has been identified that will start in 2021 that will allow for upgrades to physical space and technological solutions in classified and watch operations spaces without loss of function in the process.