Clearing the Air

In May, the Office of Personnel Management set off a firestorm when it put its plans to absorb a Defense Department agency that conducts background investigations for security clearances on hold. In February 2003, OPM Director Kay Coles James announced that her agency would take over the operations of the Defense Security Service, a move many experts thought would help speed the vetting of security clearance applications, a particularly important goal since demand has risen sharply in a post-Sept. 11, security-frenzied government.

The controversy isn't so much that OPM later nixed the plan. Rather, it's the reason for doing so that has stirred the ire of some career DSS investigators who say the agency is blaming them for the security clearance backlog. In March, Stephen Benowitz, OPM's associate director of human resources, products and services, said that the agency halted the merger after reviewing DSS' business practices. They "were not up to the standard we hoped they were," Benowitz said, adding that the agency uses a cumbersome computer system for processing cases, and agents work too slowly. According to Defense figures, DSS took 375 days on average to approve a clearance application for contractor employees in fiscal 2003, and about 188,000 cases from private-sector workers were backlogged as of March 2004.

The criticism of DSS spawned a torrent of strongly worded rebuttals from dozens of its field investigators. They say that OPM has shifted the blame for the backlog-which has prompted outrage on Capitol Hill-to DSS' doorstep, when OPM shares much of the responsibility. The employees say DSS has been mischaracterized as inept and slow-moving, when in fact, they say, its investigators are more experienced and more thorough than the contractors OPM uses.

In interviews and e-mail exchanges, some DSS investigators-who asked not to be named-said the reasons for the security clearance slowdown cannot be pinned on one agency. They also said that neither OPM nor DSS officials have been entirely forthcoming or honest with the investigators about their future or plans for DSS.

When OPM's James and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz announced that the two agencies would merge, it seemed a logical move. Both managed hundreds of thousands of applications for security clearances. DSS investigators are a well-trained lot. And OPM hires private workers from U.S. Investigations Services, a company that was formed in a spin-off of OPM employees in 1996.

But OPM and DSS aren't so similar. "We have two different ways of doing business," says one DSS investigator. OPM conducts mostly pre-employment checks for government employees, which largely involves examining automated records, the investigator contends. But DSS agents are street-level investigators, screening people who may obtain access to the government's top secrets. "If OPM fails to conduct a proper background investigation, the worst that could happen is that their customer [a federal agency] hires someone of possibly not the highest character," the investigator says. "If DSS fails to conduct a proper background investigation, the state of our nation's national security is at jeopardy."

OPM disputes that notion. The agency "has a long history of conducting national security investigations for civilian government agencies," says OPM's Benowitz. He cites as examples the Energy and Homeland Security departments. The latter has been in existence just over a year, and Energy clearance needs hardly match those of the Defense Department. OPM began processing some of DSS' cases just last year. DSS has more experience processing military personnel and military intelligence customers. It also runs a counterintelligence program to ferret out potential national security threats. In sum, intelligence and national security are DSS' stock in trade.

Pending the merger, DSS had been prohibited from opening any new background investigations as OPM had taken on some of the agency's cases. OPM now handles 185,609 DSS investigations, most of which involve automated records checks, Benowitz says. Nearly 65,000 cases, however, require investigators to interview people who know the applicant and to do various shoe-leather detective tasks. Therefore, OPM now is squarely in the backlog mix and must share a hefty portion of the task for clearing it.

"DSS has retained full responsibility for managing their workloads," Benowitz says. That comes as a surprise to many DSS investigators, who say they've received no word from their managers about what their future holds. Many feel in limbo.

"All these changes are taking place in a virtual vacuum of information coming from DSS senior management," says one special agent in charge of a DSS field office. "Rumors circulate constantly. It is a distraction."

In March 2003, the agent attended a "town hall meeting" with DSS staff and OPM officials. It was "supposed to be a forum for OPM officials to clear the air, dispel rumors and unveil their plans for a DSS-OPM merger," the agent says.

OPM praised DSS employees, saying they "conduct the best investigations," the agent recalls, "and that OPM could not wait until we joined 'Team OPM.' " A year later, the agent learned from press accounts-not managers-that the merger was on hold. The action even took DSS officials by surprise.

A lot of things about the merger concern DSS employees. The most vocal aren't against it per se. Rather, they feel as if they've been made the scapegoat for the backlog and that their "business processes" have been unfairly castigated. A case in point is the computer system DSS uses to process cases. It's a Microsoft Windows-based application that lets agents enter text easily in a narrative style. By contrast, OPM uses an older operating system-DOS-which requires users to open and close a number of windows to enter text in different fields.

OPM plans to train DSS investigators to use its system, called the Personnel Investigation Processing System, by the end of this month. Several DSS investigators mock it-calling it "twits" instead of "PIPS"-and refer to the training sessions, held in Pittsburgh, as being shipped off to "PIPSburgh." They contend it takes two to three times as long to enter cases into PIPS, and that this is a large contributor to the backlog.

Benowitz has gotten several glowing reviews from DSS employees about the maligned program. "I like PIPS, nice system!" says one unnamed convert, whose review Benowitz supplied. But dozens of DSS employees, while admitting PIPS does an excellent job generating reports on finished cases, have called the program cumbersome and awkward. OPM officials say the same about the DSS system.

Many DSS investigators are self-described disgruntled employees. But none interviewed for this story expressed dissatisfaction with their job. The investigators think they play a key role in defending the nation from terrorists and internal threats. In their opinion, the way to solve the backlog is to give DSS more money to hire more field agents. "I believe that the American people deserve nothing less," says one agent.

Winnowing the backlog will require more investigators. But where will they come from? According to a General Accounting Office report earlier this year, OPM's main contractor, U.S. Investigations Services, is hiring 100 employees per month, but losing 70. DSS employees wonder why the agency's leaders aren't fighting for more investigators, since it appears DSS has better luck retaining employees. Requests for comment by DSS officials went unfulfilled.

So, DSS employees wait and wonder. One supervisor laments, "I am extremely frustrated that I have no answers for my employees. They ask me on a daily basis what is going on . . . . I do not know."

Waiting for Clearance

Source: OPM, May 2004