The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently released an undated presentation entitled, The Security Clearance and Investigation Process. Included in the presentation are the following data:

Case Type FY 09
Initial Security Clearance Investigations 636,873
Periodic Reinvestigations for Top Secret 98,211
Public Trust Investigations 222,339
Suitability Investigations 165,476
Other 934,326
Total 2,047,225

The fastest 90% of the initial security clearance investigations were completed in an average of 41 days (70 days for Top Secret and 36 days for Secret/Confidential).

For Fiscal Year 2005 OPM reported conducted 31,300 Public Trust Investigations (Background Investigations—BI, Limited Background Investigations—LBI, and Minimum Background Investigations—MBI) and 142,354 Suitability Investigations (National Agency Check with Inquires—NACI). These numbers increased in FY07 to about 47,000 and 284,500 (respectively). The FY09 figures show a dramatic increase in Public Trust investigations. The rise and fall of NACIs from FY05 to FY09 may have been caused by a large surge of investigations for HSPD-12 PIV cards. The category of “Other” primarily covers NACs (National Agency Check) and SACs (Special Agreement Check). SACs are usually a single records check, such as an FBI fingerprint check, military personnel records check, credit check, etc., used for pre-screening candidates, resolving individual security/suitability issues, or fulfilling other federal agency mission related objectives that don’t require a standard security or suitability investigation.