Security clearance processing deadlines pose challenges

Federal officials said Tuesday they will face challenges in meeting congressionally mandated deadlines for faster processing of security clearance applications, the first of which is to take effect at the end of the year.

"We are not on the path we wanted to be on," said Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. "We will fix this."

Johnson and officials from the Office of Personnel Management, Defense Department and Defense Security Service discussed the deadlines in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act as part of a panel hosted by OPM.

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 targets for increasingly shorter waiting times.

Rising numbers of clearance requests will make the upcoming deadline difficult, OPM officials said. OPM projected that it would have to handle 1.5 million requests for clearance this year, but that count could be as high as nearly 1.8 million. OPM handles 90 percent of all security clearance requests.

DSS Acting Director Kathleen Watson said Monday that, for the first time in months, the agency has resumed full operations, passing more clearances along to OPM for investigations. OPM took over the task of conducting background checks for DSS in February 2005, but DSS still has to cover the cost of processing applications, which can be thousands of dollars each, depending on the level of clearance needed.

In late April, DSS stopped advancing clearance applications because of funding issues. In mid-May, it resumed processing initial requests for secret clearances. Now, the agency has re-initiated first inquiries and re-investigations for classified, secret and Top Secret clearance requests, Watson said. OPM Director Linda Springer said the agencies responsible for granting clearances will see an even bigger challenge when the government's aging workers begin to opt for retirement in large numbers. As much as 40 percent of the federal workforce could retire within the next decade, she said.

"We are facing, in the federal government, a retirement tsunami," she said. "We will be very busy doing background investigations" as new hires come to work.

OPM's associate director for investigations, Kathy Dillaman, told attendees of Tuesday's discussion that the agency's Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing program, or e-QIP, will help the agency in meeting these challenges. E-QIP speeds up the process through automation. It eventually will be able to store the data of employees who use it, making for smoother re-investigations when initial clearances expire.

The intelligence law deadlines also could prove difficult for agencies that handle clearance applications independently of OPM, including many of the intelligence agencies.

One source that has contracts with the National Security Agency, who declined to be identified because those contracts with the agency require nondisclosure, said having to grant more clearances quickly could even pose a threat to the intelligence community.

NSA, and other intelligence agencies, use "dangles" to entice a pending hire, or an existing one, into improper behavior, as a test of loyalty, the source said. "Dangle" tests include whether a worker would remain faithful to a spouse under tempting circumstances, whether he or she might try drugs, or whether a worker would disclose sensitive and classified information after several drinks.

Now, the source said, there is no time to "dangle" a carrot in front of a hire, as the agency must expedite its security clearance process. Instead, the source said, "the dangles would happen later in the career of the person." Testing later is not equal to testing immediately, the source added, saying, "It would also mean that an untrustworthy person could slip in under the radar" during his or her initial investigation.