Pentagon lacks overall plan to ease security clearance backlog

The Defense Department has failed over the past year to implement a comprehensive plan to alleviate its security clearance backlog, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In a May 2004 report (GAO-04-632), GAO outlined steps the Pentagon could take to address delays in processing security clearance applications. GAO told the Pentagon to join with the Office of Personnel Management to develop an "integrated, comprehensive management plan" to fix the problem.

In February 2005, Defense transferred its unit that manages the investigations phase of the process, including about 1,800 employees, to the Office of Personnel Management. Now the Pentagon obtains nearly all its clearance investigations from OPM.

But last week, Derek Stewart, GAO's director of defense capabilities and management, sent a letter (GAO-05-988R) to Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, saying that Defense still had not created a system that "sets priorities, identifies resources, establishes performance measures" and "provides milestones for permanently eliminating the backlog."

Stewart's analysis came in response to a question from Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J, at a June 28 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Management and the Federal Workforce. The senator asked what progress the Defense Department had made in designing the kind of comprehensive plan that GAO had recommended.

In its response to the 2004 GAO report, Defense Department officials said they did not agree with the recommendation to create a single management plan to cut the backlog.

"The department has numerous plans under way to improve the [security clearance] process from 'end-to-end'," they wrote. "These plans align changes with functional responsibilities. GAO does not identify why a single, comprehensive management plan would improve our ability to achieve success."

Stewart noted in his letter that on June 17, the Office of Management and Budget announced it would step in to help agencies with security clearance investigation delays.

According to Stewart, Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at OMB, met with GAO officials to discuss the backlog. After that meeting and the subcommittee hearing, OMB said it had decided to "work with agencies to set clear and aggressive milestones" to correct the security clearance backlog problem.

GAO reported that as of March 31, 2004, the Defense Department's clearance backlog amounted to about 188,000 cases.