Security Clearance Jobs Blog

On December 7, 2009 Psnews reported that the Government of Australian will consolidate the granting of all security clearances under their Department of Defence by October 2010. Currently clearances are granted by more than 100 different agencies using 50 separate investigative service providers.

“The new approach is expected to save $5.3 million a year and improve the security vetting process by ensuring Public Servants and business contractors have a single clearance effective across Government.  It was also designed to address unnecessary regulation and remove inconsistencies within the current system.”

Australia only processes about 50,000 federal security clearances a year (about 6% of the number processed in the U.S.), but it’s still commendable that government agencies there are wililng to surrender authority for their own security clearances to a single agency in order to create a monolithic system that promises greater efficiency and consistency.

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The quest to speed up the security clearance process continues with several Senators introducing the Security Clearance Modernization and Reporting Act of 2009 yesterday.

Overall the bill’s goal is similar to the Executive Order 13467 President Bush signed in June 2008 and would codify many of those provisions.

An article in NextGov goes on to say that the bill would:

• “mandate the creation of a performance accountability council to oversee the reduction of the government’s security clearance backlog and extends reporting requirements.”
• director of OMB will submit an IT strategy to Congress within 120 days of the bill’s enactment to speed up the security clearance process.
• “agencies would have to continue reporting to Congress on their progress in improving the security clearance process until two years after GAO removes the program from the high-risk list.”

“As for reciprocal recognition of security clearances among agencies, the legislation, a Senate Democratic committee aide said the bill “reemphasizes” that requirement. “We were getting the sense that not everyone was following the intent, as we saw it, of what reciprocal recognition was,” the staffer said.”

Related Articles: Security Clearance Reciprocity of Special Access Eligibility

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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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PERSONNEL SECURITY CLEARANCES: An Outcome-Focused Strategy Is Needed to Guide Implementation of the Reformed Clearance Process (GAO-09-488), May 2009:

The security clearance reform process has already been underway for several years, and various agencies involved have created and revised several plans for improvement. Although the high-level leadership and governance structure of the current reform effort distinguish it from previous efforts, without a strategic framework that fully addresses the long-standing security clearance problems and incorporates key practices for transformation including the ability to demonstrate progress leading to desired results the effort is at risk of losing momentum and not being fully implemented.

The GAO report made several recommendations for establishing a strategic framework for the joint reform effort, including clearer goals, outcome-focused performance measures, formal communications strategy, further definition of roles and responsibilities for implementation of IT strategy, and determining funding requirements.

Somewhat disturbing was the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) response to the draft version of GAO-09-488:

OPM believes that it is important not to conflate the suitability and security clearance processes. Nonetheless, it recognizes that there are areas of commonality between the two and agrees that both processes should be administered efficiently and aligned where appropriate. The means by which these goals are accomplished, however ”whether through the governance structure established by Executive Order 13467 (and studied by the GAO) or in some other fashion”is currently under review by the new Administration, as are the reform initiatives discussed in the draft report. This review may result in a new governance structure and/or new goals and standards. For that reason, while the critiques discussed in GAO’s report will certainly merit consideration going forward, I do not believe that it would be productive at this time to address with greater specificity the concerns it expresses about the past management of the reform process.

A new governance structure and/or new goals and standards?

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Many qualified people find themselves unable to successfully compete for federal positions because they don’t have an “active” or “current” security clearance. This situation is often characterized as a “Catch-22″ in that you can’t get sponsored for a security clearance without a job offer from a federal agency or contractor, and you often can’t get the job offer without a clearance.

A British IT contractor recently initiated an E-Petition at the UK Prime Minister’s website requesting that individuals be allowed to pay for their own clearances. So far 614 people have signed the petition. An American initiated a similar petition at a non-governmental E-Petition website without suggesting who would pay for the processing and has only gathered 22 signatures. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for “the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The UK Prime Minister’s E-Petition website has existed for over a year, but a similar website for the US President is only now being discussed on a blog page at the White House website.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) conducts about 80% of all federal security clearance investigations. Their current price for a standard NACLC investigation needed for a contractor Secret clearance is $221. Because OPM clearance investigations are handled on a fee-for-service basis, the mechanism exists for individuals to pay for their own investigations, but no mechanism exists to pay for adjudicating the investigations. Another obstacle to self-sponsorship is the federal government’s policy to limit clearance requests to only those positions for which a validate need exists. Without these 2 obstacles private companies could fill the need to provide the necessary front-end application and payment processing.

Is it time for the federal government to allow people to sponsor themselves for a security clearance, if they are willing to personally pay for it?

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A May 2009 report, The DHS Personnel Security Process, issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) stated that:

“Department of Homeland Security personnel security offices are performing similar functions but use different policies throughout the personnel security process. Across the department, components strive to provide quality results in a timely manner but often are delayed by applicants, overwhelmed by customer service requests, restricted by database functions, and limited by information availability.”

The report made 20 recommendations to improve the Department of Homeland Security’s personnel security process, including some recommendations to consolidate security functions. As of November 2008 DHS was phasing in the use of a new department-wide web-based system to manage investigations and clearances to replace the 9 separate systems used by component agencies. Currently about half the components of DHS have authority to conduct their own clearance investigations. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Custom Enforcement contract for background investigations with several private companies. US Coast Guard and DHS Headquarters use a mix of investigative services provided by contractors and the Office of Personnel Management. The Secret Service uses internal investigative resources.

The report also contained investigative and adjudicative elapse times by departmental components. For 2008 average investigative times ranged from 30 to 96 days and average adjudicative times ranged from 17 to 147 days.

Related Article: DHS to Streamline Security Clearance Process

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On May 8, 2009 John Berry, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) jokingly told a senate subcommittee that his agency was sometimes referred to as the “Office of Personnel Recommendations.”  Berry made this comment at a hearing on the Federal Hiring Process Improvement Act of 2009 (S.736). OPM has no ability to force other federal agencies to comply with existing personnel rules, and no penalties exist for noncompliance.

Regardless of Berry’s stated intent to administratively implement the provisions of S736, the legislation is necessary for any substantive changes to the government’s cumbersome and slow hiring practices. S.736 seeks to:

• Require agencies to promptly notify applicants of their status at each major step of the selection process.
• Fill vacancies in an average of 80 days or less.
• Allow applicants to submit a cover letter, resume, and answers to brief questions, such as questions relating to United States citizenship and veterans status, to complete an application
• Improve job announcements
• Eliminate KSAs (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) essays.

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On 20 May 2009 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report (GAO-09-400) on Department of Defense (DoD) security clearances, announcing, “Comprehensive timeliness reporting, complete clearance documentation, and quality measures are needed to further improve the clearance process.”

According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and DoD, the top 90% of initial security clearances for DoD personnel took an average of 124 days to process in 2008. GAO came up with a number different than OPM and DoD, but they measured processing time in terms of the percentage of cases that took more than 120 days. GAO also found that 87% of Top Secret clearances adjudicated in July 2008 were missing one or more elements required by the national investigative standards.

The report is a follow-up to a 19 December 2008 GAO report (GAO-09-261R), DoD Personnel Clearances: Preliminary Observations about Timeliness and Quality. The new report provides more details regarding GAO’s findings from their earlier report. Interestingly, the new report alludes to the February 2009 annual report required by Title III of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), but this report has not been made publicly available on the internet.

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A March 11, 2009 article in the Federal Times revisited The Joint Security and Suitability Reform Team‘s aims, including creating an automated end-to-end clearance process by the end of 2010. The idea is to use computers to automate what can be automated and to help better direct investigators toward areas where more scrutiny is needed…

“The government also wants to automate the process of approving and disapproving ” known as adjudicating” secret security clearances…Roughly one-quarter of secret investigations find no red flags that would cause adjudicating officials to take a closer look”…

The Army started experimenting with e-adjudication in November and will soon (June) be conducting automated record checks.

“Some industry observers, however, expect the effort will take at least three to five years to complete”…

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