[Infowarrior] - Government Picks Up Speed on Security Clearances

[Richard Forno]

Government Picks Up Speed on Security Clearances

By Stephen Barr
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; D03

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021802
304_pf.html

There's still too much paper to pluck from files. There's not enough sharing
of information. Yet despite such problems, the government has been picking
up speed in processing security clearances.

In a report sent to Congress last week, the Bush administration said most
security clearances for federal employees and contractors were completed in
an average of 118 days.

That turnaround time beats the 130-day goal set by Congress in the 2004
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Act. Before the law was passed, it took
more than a year on average to conduct an investigation for a top-secret
clearance, and investigations for secret and confidential clearances
averaged five to six months, according to the report.

The law requires the administration to move even faster on security
clearances by the end of 2009.

To achieve the 2009 goal, the government will have to complete security
clearances in 74 days, or 44 days faster than it did in the first quarter of
fiscal 2008.

"We have to identify opportunities to reform or transform this system,
because the way we do it now is basically the same way it has been done for
decades," Clay Johnson III, deputy director for management at the Office of
Management and Budget, said in an interview. He added, "There are better
ways, more computer-aided ways, to do a lot of this."

President Bush, in a memo this month, directed key officials to submit a
plan by the end of April for improving background checks and security
clearances. Johnson is helping lead that effort, joined by James R. Clapper
Jr., undersecretary of defense for intelligence; Mike McConnell, director of
national intelligence; and Linda M. Springer, director of the Office of
Personnel Management.

The report to Congress provides a snapshot of some of the issues they face.

Defense contractors remain concerned that their clearances are taking too
long and that time spent evaluating a background check and approving a
clearance is lengthening. On average, defense contractors are waiting 151
days to receive a clearance. Reinvestigations of defense contractors to
update top-secret clearances are taking 267 days, on average.

In part, the longer wait time for defense contractors is because the
approval process involves extra steps, and the Pentagon is moving to
streamline procedures, Johnson said.

When federal employees and contractors transfer to another part of the
government, too many agencies still balk at accepting the security
clearances and employment suitability determinations made by another agency.
Johnson said agencies should be encouraging reciprocity.

Technology also is a major problem when it comes to checking records for
police arrests, criminal convictions, divorces, bankruptcies and debts.

While the FBI delivers 83 percent of the records requested within 30 days,
on average, it still has a backlog of 53,000 requests that are more than 30
days old. Only 20 percent of state law-enforcement records can be obtained
electronically.

While the State Department, Air Force and Army can provide electronic
records to investigators, the Navy and Marines have only recently put their
records into databases.

Because of problems in obtaining third-party information, the government has
about 42,000 investigations in the pipeline that are more than 180 days old.
The delay is down from 137,000 cases in October 2006.

"We've got a lot of work to do, still," Johnson said.