Panelists push fully automated security clearance processing

The Office of Personnel Management should switch to an automated system of processing security clearance applications, federal and private sector officials told the House Government Reform Committee Thursday.

Applications will have to move through OPM and other processing agencies faster to meet targets set in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. The first deadline, set for the end of December, would require that 80 percent of initial background investigations and security clearance determinations be completed in 120 days. Later deadlines set goals for increasingly shorter waiting times.

Officials from the Defense Department and National Archives and Records Administration's information security and oversight office agreed that security clearance requests - the majority of which are routed through OPM - would move faster if the entire application were submitted electronically.

"Increased reliance on automation is key," said J. William Leonard, director of the archives' oversight office.

Leonard said he opposes the continued use of "gumshoe" techniques like the "neighborhood check" of a clearance applicant and said background checks instead will have to be conducted, for the most part, through digital and electronic means.

OPM already is phasing in its Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing program, or e-QIP, to speed up applications. E-QIP will be able to store employees' data, making for smoother re-investigations when initial clearances expire. No OPM officials testified at the hearing.

Industry witnesses said given the current shortage of workers with classified, secret or Top Secret clearances, they are forced to make clearance status a priority over other job qualifications, and said their bottom line is taking a hit as well.

"The security clearance is the number one priority," said Doug Wagoner, chairman of the Information Technology Association of America's intelligence subcommittee, when asked by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., if a lesser qualified candidate would get a job with his firm simply because that person possessed a security clearance.

Wagoner, who testified also on behalf of the Security Clearance Coalition, said simply having a clearance can enhance a job offer for an applicant by 15 percent to 25 percent. He testified that using methods like digital fingerprinting and signature scanning would help speed up clearance requests.

Davis said that, beyond the cost to the private sector, federal funds are being wasted.

"For taxpayers, for industry… but particularly for taxpayers, they are paying a huge premium for people who already have security clearances," he said.

Mark Zaid, an attorney who routinely represents individuals in clearance appeal cases, said Congress should push the Government Accountability Office to investigate the appeals process as well.

Lawmakers criticized the Defense Department's Office of Hearings and Appeals, saying the agency typically will reject appeals from people who have had their clearance requests denied, but noting the Defense Department is exponentially more successful in having the clearances revoked after they are initially approved.

Zaid said the appeals office's jurisdiction should be limited to only taking cases from people challenging clearance rejections.