Government Picks Up Speed on Security Clearances

There's still too much paper to pluck from files. There's not enough sharing of information. Yet despite such problems, the government has been picking up speed in processing security clearances.

In a report sent to Congress last week, the Bush administration said most security clearances for federal employees and contractors were completed in an average of 118 days.

That turnaround time beats the 130-day goal set by Congress in the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Act. Before the law was passed, it took more than a year on average to conduct an investigation for a top-secret clearance, and investigations for secret and confidential clearances averaged five to six months, according to the report.

The law requires the administration to move even faster on security clearances by the end of 2009.

To achieve the 2009 goal, the government will have to complete security clearances in 74 days, or 44 days faster than it did in the first quarter of fiscal 2008.

"We have to identify opportunities to reform or transform this system, because the way we do it now is basically the same way it has been done for decades," Clay Johnson III, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview. He added, "There are better ways, more computer-aided ways, to do a lot of this."

President Bush, in a memo this month, directed key officials to submit a plan by the end of April for improving background checks and security clearances. Johnson is helping lead that effort, joined by James R. Clapper Jr., undersecretary of defense for intelligence; Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence; and Linda M. Springer, director of the Office of Personnel Management.

The report to Congress provides a snapshot of some of the issues they face.

Defense contractors remain concerned that their clearances are taking too long and that time spent evaluating a background check and approving a clearance is lengthening. On average, defense contractors are waiting 151 days to receive a clearance. Reinvestigations of defense contractors to update top-secret clearances are taking 267 days, on average.

In part, the longer wait time for defense contractors is because the approval process involves extra steps, and the Pentagon is moving to streamline procedures, Johnson said.

When federal employees and contractors transfer to another part of the government, too many agencies still balk at accepting the security clearances and employment suitability determinations made by another agency. Johnson said agencies should be encouraging reciprocity.

Technology also is a major problem when it comes to checking records for police arrests, criminal convictions, divorces, bankruptcies and debts.