Introduction:
United States Department of Energy was founded on October 1st, 1977. The Department’s headquarter is located in Washington D.C. Even though the organization does not have as long history of operations as one would expect, it certainly has one of the richest and most diverse history in Federal Government. The biggest importance of the Department lies in the fact that it succeeded to connect two federal programmatic traditions despite the fact that it was not possible before. These traditions are as follows:
1. Defense responsibilities- development, production and testing of nuclear weapons dating from the Manhattan Project effort to build the atomic bomb
2. A loosely knit amalgamation of all the programs related to energy the government has been dealing with
The mission of the Energy Department is ensuring United States’ prosperity and security by addressing its nuclear, environmental and energy challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.
(US Department of Energy official website, 2014, retrieved from http://www.energy.gov/mission)
The main concerns of the Department are United States’ policies regarding energy and safety in dealing with the nuclear material, nuclear weapons, nuclear reactor production, energy conservation, disposal of all radioactive waste, production of domestic energy and all the research related to energy in general.
The organization employs more than 116.000 people. Interesting fact is that around 100.000 of these are contract employees and only 16.000 are employed directly to the department.
The whole Department is actually composed of eight different agencies:
1. The Office of National Nuclear Security Administration Energy,
2. The Office of Environmental Management,
3. The Office of Fossil Energy,
4. The Office of Legacy Management,
5. The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability,
6. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management,
7. The Office of Science, and
8. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
The case study is going to deal with management control system of previously described organization- United States Department of Energy. After several chapters dealing with planning, budget, accounting, financial issues, performance and risk management, the case study is going to end with the management control decisions followed by conclusions and suggestions. All the references are going to be clearly listed in the end of the case study on Reference list page.
Planning:
“The mission of the Department of energy is ensuring United States’ security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. “
Apart from the mission, there are four additional goals of the department. First goal is transformation of US energy system. Second goal is maintaining a vibrant national effort in both engineering and science. Next goal would be securing the nation and the last but certainly not the least is establishment and maintenance of operational and management excellence of the department.
The person in charge for DoE planning is Chief Information Officer, Michael Locatis. According to him, US Department of energy has established very important partnerships between its internal information technology resources, United States national laboratories and strategic networks, some of which are from inside the department, while the others are from the outside. The main purpose of these partnerships is promotion of agency-wide innovation and effective as well as efficient operations, which results in form of very important and valuable outcomes for US nation. The department’s strategy includes the following:
- Leveraging existing IT and expertise in order to reduce total costs, but also maximize organization’s mission accomplishment.
- Identifying and developing emerging IT in order to reduce total costs, but also maximize organization’s mission accomplishment.
- Providing IT governance processes and polices for the department in order to establish and maintain effective and efficient resource allocation.
- Ensuring risk-based cyber-security by using real-time risk management and
- establishing organization situational awareness
Michael Locatis is trying his best to find the most effective way of achieving the US Department of energy’s mission by both sharing the best practices across the federal information technology community and improving them.
Organization of the department:
The department employs over 100.000 people and supports contractors as well. It is basically managed by numerous national laboratories and technology centers, but also national nuclear Security administration. Apart from these, Power Marketing administration, staff and program offices, energy information,
administration, field and operations

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