Defense Department lacks staff to tackle security clearance backlog

The Defense Department is grappling with a backlog of about 180,000 applications for security clearances from private sector workers, and the time it takes to process those clearances has increased in the past three years, according to a report released Wednesday by the General Accounting Office.

In the report (GAO-04-632),GAO found the average time it takes the department to conduct a background investigation of a clearance applicant and to decide whether to award a clearance has increased by 56 days over the last three fiscal years, to 375 days.

The backlog consists of three categories: 101,000 new investigations or reinvestigations (which are required to renew clearances) that haven't been completed; more than 61,000 cases that need reinvestigation, but that haven't been submitted to the department; and more than 25,000 adjudications, or determinations of clearance eligibility, have not been completed.

GAO identified several causes of the backlog, which has become a particularly nettlesome problem for Defense as the demand for clearances-from both federal personnel and contractors-has increased amid heightened security across government. An increase in the number of requests for top secret clearances, which require more time to process, has also contributed to the problem, GAO found.

Top secret clearances often require investigators to conduct face-to-face interviews with an applicant's friends, co-workers and relatives. The Defense Security Service, which includes some of the most experienced background investigators in the government, conducts those interviews. Several DSS employees have complained in recent weeks that the organization is short-staffed and underfunded.

GAO concurred with that assessment, saying there are "insufficient investigative and adjudicative workforces to handle the large workloads" and recommended that Defense civilian officials develop a plan to reduce the backlog. Among the recommendations is eliminating limitations on reciprocity, the acceptance by one agency or department of a clearance granted by another. Contractors have targeted lack of reciprocity as one cause for the backlog.

Defense is considering a number of options to cut the backlog, including conducting phased reinvestigations, establishing a separate adjudicative group for private sector applicants, reevaluating DSS's investigative standards and installing an automated verification process for private-sector clearance requirements, GAO said.

One highly anticipated effort aimed at addressing the backlog is on hold, however. Last year, the Office of Personnel Management announced it would absorb DSS employees into its investigative operation in an effort to streamline the clearance process. Last month, however, OPM backed off that plan. "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.

That statement touched off an intense reaction among DSS employees. In interviews, several of them expressed frustration at OPM for trying to pin the backlog mainly on DSS. The investigators, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, say that DSS faces a greater hurdle because the background investigations that it conducts are more thorough and time-consuming than those OPM performs for civilian agency employees and contractors.

Benowitz has disputed that, saying that OPM follows the same national security clearance guidelines as DSS. Currently, DSS isn't allowed to open any new investigations, and has been focusing on cutting the backlog and training its employees to use OPM's automated case processing system. DSS investigators express frustration over adapting to OPM's system, saying it is cumbersome and outdated.

In a May 25 letter to House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., OPM Director Kay Coles James assured him that "OPM and DSS have been working closely together to orchestrate the successful, seamless transfer of automated case management from the Department of Defense system to OPM's" system. James said it would cost more than $100 million to overhaul the Defense system. The DSS investigators say the OPM system doesn't allow for the flexibility of entering case notes and text that is a trademark of the Defense system, which is based on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The OPM system is based on the much older DOS platform.

James told Davis that all DSS employees would be trained on the OPM system-called the Personnel Investigations Processing System (PIPS)-by the end of the month.