Security Clearance Jobs Blog

Last week during the Telework Exchange Town Hall Meeting, OPM Director John Berry credited the approx. 5,000 investigators who worked from home in reducing the average time needed for a security clearance investigation from a year in ‘01 to 37 days.

The Department of Defense (DoD) had the greatest number (16,871)  of employees teleworking. Although cybersecurity concerns may undermine the ability of many defense employees to work at home.  However, as noted a few months ago, the DoD will test a program aimed to set up a secure telework site in the D.C. metro area for federal employees who need to access classified networks.

Status of Telework in the Federal Government [pdf] | telework.gov

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When your job responsibilities include overseeing nearly $1 billion in research for the Missile Defense Agency, Department of Homeland Security, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and other intelligence agencies, the chances are you’re going to need security clearance to get a peek inside.

The Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University is overseen by the University’s President, Ronald Daniels, who is Canadian.

The article in the Baltimore Sun went on to say that the University had to use some creative thinking to keep the Lab’s government funding; with the creation of a Limited Liability Corp. (LLC) and the university’s board of trustees chairman overseeing the Lab.

Related Article:  Foreign Influence and Security Clearances

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On September 15, 2009 a hearing was held before a Senate subcommittee responsible for oversight of the Federal government’s security clearance reform process. Testifying before the subcommittee were representatives of OMB, OPM, DOD, ODNI, and GAO. Transcripts of their prepared statements are posted at the Senate subcommittee’s website.

Here are some highlights from the prepared statements:

• 90% of initial clearance investigations by OPM are done in an average of 37 days.
• Average investigation for a Top Secret clearance now takes 79 days.
• Average investigation for a Secret clearance now takes 47 days.
• Security clearance investigation backlog (cases older than 180 days) has been eliminated.
• E-Adjudication of Secret clearances was implemented for DOD industrial cases in September 2009 (originally planned for May 2009). This capability will be extended to the Air Force and Navy adjudication facilities by December 2009.

Here are some of the lowlights:

• 11% of initial clearance eligibility decisions took more than 300 days to complete in FY08.
• Only 260,000 of the estimated 3 million active security clearances are currently in OPM’s Clearance Verification System.
• The new Federal Investigative Standards that were approved in December 2009 (but not yet implement) will be changed.
• The new SF86, originally expected to be approved by January 2009, won’t even be available for public comment until late September 2009 (a lengthy process required before final approval).
• According to GAO, long-term funding requirements for the reformed process still have not been identified.

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An article in the National Journal covers a security clearance process that is painfully slow at the State Department. For entry level employees at the State Department, especially interns, start dates are moved back waiting for a security clearance.

In most cases, the State Department outsources investigations to contractors, however, when an applicant has lived or traveled extensively overseas, Diplomatic Security takes over the investigation.  The State Department processes 25,000 clearance cases a year and in 3Q of this year, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security needed an average of 54 days to issue entry-level clearances, down from 64 days in 2008.

In addition, the article airs allegations made by the group called Concerned Foreign Service Officers regarding State Department investigators of sometimes practicing ethnic and religious profiling, resulting from insufficient internal checks.

Follow-up: A blog on Foreign Policy published reactions from former State Department interns on this issue.

Quote of the day: “With the clearance process, as an applicant, you don’t know anything…” – State Department would-be intern.

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