Security Clearance Jobs Blog

A January 27, 2008 WashingtonPost.com article reported, “Global markets may be writhing and the U.S. economy teetering at the brink of recession, but for many of the nation’s largest defense firms, the good times keep going.”

“We are about as far removed from the credit risk and those sorts of matters as you can imagine,” said Bruce L. Tanner, chief financial officer at Lockheed Martin of Bethesda. “We feel sort of insulated.”

Although some analysts see that possible troop reductions could hurting the defense industry in the long run; at least one major defense contractor is predicting continued reasonable growth for defense spending in the federal budget for 2009 and beyond.  The largest defense contractors will be relatively unaffected over the long term due to their large multiyear contracts.

What do you think? Are defense industry jobs insulated against the declining economy?

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A January 14, 2008 article in the Ashbury Park Press quoted Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) saying that the plan does not “pass the laugh test” and Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-NJ) calling it “wishful thinking.”

Since only about 30% of the employees of Fort Monmouth, NJ will move to the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) in Maryland, the Army wants security clearances for new hires at APG to be completely processed within one month, as part of its plan to close Fort Monmouth by September 2011.

A December 2007 report to Congress included details on how the Army plans to put security clearances on a fast track.  Here’s the plan:

Security Clearances. Virtually all CECOM LCMC positions, require a Secret or Top Secret security clearance. In view of the large amount of hiring, CECOM LCMC will look to two initiatives to resolve this issue: (1) OPM pilot with Army Central Security Clearance Facility to reduce processing and delivery time to less than one month; and (2) DoD, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) implementation of a defined industry solution. If insufficient to handle the large volume, which will be required, CECOM LCMC expects to obtain authority for special case handling through DA to OPM/OMB.

Despite recent improvements at OPM, at least 20% of the investigations for Secret clearances and all of the investigations for Top Secret clearances will probably take much more than a month, even if conducted as “priority” cases and/or under some “pilot” project.  Full implementation of the DoD-OMB-DNI reinvention of the security clearance process, which as not yet been tested, probably won’t occur for two years.  Relying on two unproven initiatives hardly seems to qualify as a viable plan. However, kudos for bringing this subject into the mainstream.

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According to a November 12 report in Washington Technology, some major defense contractors feel that no significant improvement has been made this year in security clearance processing times.

“Despite the expected need next year for more IT workers with high-level security clearances, human resources executives agree the government logjam of clearing new hires hasn’t improved much this year; nor is it likely to get much better in 2008.”

However, a October 22 article in DefenseNews.com reported OPM’s claim that the end of the federal government’s security clearance logjam is finally in sight.

“Kathy Dillaman, associate director for OPM’s Federal Investigative Services, said that 80 percent of OPM’s initial investigations of applicants are being finished in less than 70 days. That’s down from 80 percent in 121 days in fiscal 2006, and on its way to reaching the congressionally mandated goal of finishing 90 percent in 40 days or less.”

Significant discrepancies continue to exist between the clearance investigation processing time improvements claimed by OPM and the results experienced by defense contractors.  Is it time for a new comprehensive study of the problem by GAO?

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