The NRC’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is an independent, objective office tasked with auditing NRC programs and operations with a focus on — among other things — detecting fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement.
The office’s most recent report — an Audit of NRC’s Safety Training and Development for Technical Staff – is now available to the public. The audit set out to determine if NRC’s process for identifying safety training needs efficiently and effectively prepares staff members to perform their regulatory oversight activities.
OIG found that NRC rarely conducted occupational training needs assessments for staff positions responsible for performing safety oversight activities. And, the needs assessments that the agency had prepared were not formally reviewed on a defined basis. By conducting occupational training needs assessments on a defined basis, the NRC can provide safety training to staff in a more efficient and effective way.
OIG’s audit report makes recommendations to improve the agency’s safety-related training program. NRC management stated their general agreement with the audit report and recommendations.
The audit report, including recommendations, can be found here.
U.S. NRC Blog 
The scope of this report is NRC’s workforce overseeing licensee performance. Please see page 1 of the report for additional information. Also, beginning on page 12 of the report, we describe our objective, scope and methodology.
Stephen Dingbaum
Clarification of what constitutes a NRC “safety oversight activity” is necessary to understand the scope of the OIG finding/recommendation.
Please provide details on specific staff positions impacted, a list of excluded staff functions, or a definition of “safety oversight activity”, to help me (and those like me) better understand the scope and potential impact of the OIG finding. Thank you.