Book Description

Our independent analysis of timeliness data showed that industry personnel contracted to work for the federal government waited more than one year on average to receive top secret clearances, longer than OPM-produced statistics would suggest. Our analysis of 2,259 cases for industry personnel who were granted top secret clearance eligibility in January and February 2006 had an average of 446 days for an initial clearance and 545 days for a clearance update. While OMB has issued a goal that the application-submission phase of the clearance process will take no longer than 14 days by December 17, 2006, this phase took an average of 111 days. OPM s current procedures for measuring application submission timeliness do not fully capture all of the time in the application process that starts when the application form is submitted by the facility security officer to the federal government. Inaccurate data that the employee provided in the application, multiple reviews of the application, and manual entry of some application forms are some of the causes for the extended application-submission phase. In addition, our analyses showed that OPM took an average of 286 days to complete the initial investigations for top secret clearances, well in excess of the 180-day goal (no goal is given for clearance update investigations) specified in the government wide plan for improving the clearance process. Factors contributing to the slowness of completing the investigation phase include an inexperienced investigative workforce that has not reached its full performance level; and problems accessing national, state, and local records.