GAO Scrutinizing Clearance Reform Plan

Signal, Aug 2008 by Lawlor, Maryann

The U.S. government's watchdog agency will be keeping a close eye on activity surrounding the security and Suitability Process Reform plan. After all, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been examining the personnel security clearance processes for more than three decades, so it has seen a lot of plans come and go.

But more recently, Brenda Farrell, director, Defense Capabilities and Management, GAO, testified about the topic before the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia. The subcommittee is under the U.S. Senate's Committee on Homeland security and Governmental Affairs. What she described was a process that was in need of reform in four areas: requirements determination, quality assurance, metrics and longterm funding requirements.

On many occasions, GAO officials have pointed out several concerns not only about the lengthiness of the process but also about the quality. Since 2005, the U.S. Defense Department's security clearance program has been one of several programs on the GAO's "High-Risk List," an inventory of items that could threaten national security. The goal of the list is to raise the visibility of an issue.

"You certainly don't want people running around with security clearances that shouldn't have them. And we've had a lot of concerns not only about the timeliness issue and that they need to expedite those clearances but also about the quality. We've stressed-especially in the last few hearings -that it's not going to serve any purpose to have an expedited security clearance if it's not worth the paper it's written on," Farrell states.

"As far as we can tell, there's no quality at all. What good does it do to push these things through if nobody's taking the time to make sure that all the pieces are there? And we're not talking about missing ZIP codes," she relates. When the agency reviewed security clearance materials for completeness in 2006, the types of information they found missing from investigative files were "alarming," she adds.

The GAO has pointed out that the current system lacks the metrics to measure quality. For example, while the security clearance process comprises six phases, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) only has metrics to measure the quality of the investigative stage. "That's one thing that we're going to be looking at very carefully with this reform effort. Where are they building quality into the process, and then where are they establishing quality metrics so that they can know how well they're doing and have something with which to mitigate risk?" she maintains.

One of two GAO initiatives currently underway will examine if timeliness and quality improvements have actually occurred since 2006, when the agency looked at these topics in depth. Results from this effort are expected by the end of 2008 and will help determine if the program should remain on the High-Risk List.

Farrell reveals that although the assessment is not complete, GAO has many questions about how OPM counts the number of days it takes to obtain a security clearance. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) relies on the numbers OPM reports. This leads to the claim that it is nearing the requirement set in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to complete at least 90 percent of all applications for personnel security clearances within an average of 60 days after receiving the completed application from an authorized investigative agency.

"One of the questions we have is when does the process start? You're trying to measure timeliness end to end, and we've had some questions and a lack of agreement with OPM and OMB about when the process starts. Then there are other issues. 'Closed Pending' is one of the favorite ones, where OPM would actually suspend an investigation while waiting for some additional information, but they call it 'Closed Pending.' While it was closed, they weren't counting the time, but when the information came in, they'd start that up like a new one. You can see how that would offset the actual time of investigation. Now we're hearing from OPM that they've made progress in this area and that they're not actually counting those, but they still have the term, and we've seen it reflected in some of their materials," Farrell says.

The second GAO initiative was an assignment from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to review the reform plan using its prior work as the criteria. Because this task order came from the committee and work is still underway, Farrell cannot comment about progress to date. However, she compliments the level of attention the topic has been given by the highest levels in the federal government.

The change in administrations early next year could affect the efforts outlined in the reform effort, but Farrell is optimistic. "They [Joint Reform Team members] are trying to get it far enough along and visible enough so that it will be on the next administration's radar screen and hopefully they'll pick it up. But we are going to have to stay tuned," she states.-ML