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The Office of Personnel Management is holding off on a plan to absorb a unit of the Defense Department, a move that some experts had thought might speed up the backlogged security clearance process for federal employees and contractors.

OPM had planned last year to take over the Defense Security Service, which conducts background checks of applicants. However, after examining how DSS manages its clearance process, an OPM official said the agency decided not to bring the unit under its umbrella.

"DSS business practices were not up to the standard we hoped they were," said Stephen Benowitz, OPM's associate director of human resources, products and services. He said the two agencies have different ways of doing business.

OPM already had been handling some clearance-related work for Defense in February 2003 when OPM director Kay Coles James said the merger "represents the next logical step in the process" of continuing a "solid working relationship with regard to [security clearance services]."

However, Benowitz said James made that statement before OPM had a chance "to evaluate the business processes used in DSS." The evaluation prompted OPM to call off the merger.

Those business processes will be the subject of a congressional oversight hearing Thursday that will examine why it takes so many months for the Defense Department to process security clearances.

In fiscal 2003, it took 375 days on average for a Defense-related security clearance application to be approved, according to the House Government Reform Committee. Defense had identified about 188,000 backlogged cases for private-sector workers as of the end of March 2004.

Demand for security clearances--from federal employees as well as contract workers--has risen significantly since 9/11 and the emergence of new security-related projects in several agencies. A security clearance is considered a hiring asset for private-sector workers, and more agencies are requiring them of their own employees.

The OPM-Defense merger was billed as an effort to free up the Pentagon to focus on its core military mission. OPM would take over the clearance management process for most of the government.

However, Benowitz said the merger won't occur in fiscal 2004, and he declined to speculate on whether it would occur at all. A DSS spokeswoman, however, said the agency anticipated that the merger might take place in fiscal 2005.

Instead, OPM and DSS have struck a written agreement to train DSS investigators how to use the clearance management systems OPM has developed to manage case flow, Benowitz said. The system allows caseworkers to enter new requests in a computer, automatically assign them to field investigators and also track a case's progress until it is closed.

Benowitz said OPM is managing about 330,000 pending cases now. The agency contracts most of its investigations work to U.S. Investigations Services, a company formed in 1996 when 700 OPM employees left the agency and became co-owners of the outfit. In January 2003, a group of New York venture capitalists paid more than a half-billion dollars for the company.

COMMENTS

• It seems to me that the lack of staffing is probably the biggest problem causing the delays in getting background investigations completed in a timely manner. Hence, more people should be hired, maybe Criminal Investigators from other segments of the government could help out on a collateral duty basis, to help address the backlog of pending investigations. Also, maybe some positions do not require the same level of a background investigation as others. Hence, the investigation process could be streamlined for positions requiring a lesser amount of background investigation. Also, some of the background investigation work could be contracted out, that is an alternative to help reduce the pending cases. I'm dismayed at the treatment of the employees who perform this critical work, and I'm dismayed even more by the lack of leadership on the part of the United States Office of Personnel Management in solving this problem governmentwide, as well as helping the Defense Department solve it's backlog of pending cases in a civil manner. The "relationship problem" between OPM and DOD will only make the backlog of pending cases bigger and de-energize the employees who are doing their best to work these cases. Nicholas J. Vigilante Posted June 15, 2004 10:51 AM
• Thank you investigators and security professionals for all that you do. I know that many of your success stories are untold. I have seen it from both spectrums. Drive on! Thanks everyone! Adjudicator-USIS Former Background Investigator, Defense Intelligence Agency John Borley Posted June 2, 2004 12:21 PM
• To Mr. Cullen. You say getting a clearance is a joke. Forget about the times you submitted that were lost, I can go into a whole other story about that. You submitted in Mar 03 and have not got a clearance yet. Let me give you the perspective of the agent that is assigned to your case: Agent Smith comes to work in Mar 03 and his supervisor assigns him 15 cases, yours being one of them. He walks to his desk and puts those 15 cases under the 350 that were there before them. He pulls the case off the top and hits the street. Agent Smith is extremely productive this day in Mar 03 and closes out 7 cases that can now leave DSS and go to DISCO or CCF for adjudication (which last I heard is running about 6 months). Good deal, now he only has 358 cases to work tomorrow. He comes to work tomorrow and is assigned 17 cases from his supervisor. He goes to his desk and puts those underneath the 358 case he already has. He pulls off the top case and starts working. He has an ok day and closes 5 cases. Comes into work the next day and is assigned 12 more cases. You see the pattern here? Now why should Agent Smith say "Oh, Mr. Cullen is waiting for his clearance, I guess I should move his case to the top over all of these other people who have been waiting longer?" What makes you more special than the guy working at Lockheed Martin who has been waiting since Mar 02? Simple arithmetic says HIRE MORE PEOPLE!!! Point at the agencies doing the investigations all you want, but it doesn't make their caseload any smaller. Toss in this stupid "we're gonna merge/no were not/yes we are/no were not" garbage and it makes it worse. Did you know that OPM wanted to talk to all the DSS agents so in the western part of the country ALL DSS agents had to fly to either San Jose or San Diego for a 4 hour meeting last year? 1 day travel to, 4 hour meeting, 1 day travel back. That was 3 WHOLE days with no investigators in the field. Talk about fraud, waste and abuse! Federal Investigator Posted May 28, 2004 12:12 PM