Fedweek

Federal employees with security clearances would be subject to more frequent and more thorough reinvestigations for continued eligibility to hold them, which in turn is a condition for holding their jobs in many cases, under a provision in the late-2015 wrapup budget measure. The language, which reflects parts of bills that have been considered in Congress for several years, would require each agency to conduct reinvestigations of clearance holders at least twice every five years at random times, with more frequent checks at the agency’s discretion. That would include security checks with law enforcement agencies and other traditional sources and also “shall integrate relevant and appropriate information from various sources, including government, publicly available, and commercial data sources, consumer reporting agencies, social media, and such other sources as determined by the Director of National Intelligence. Individuals being reinvestigated would receive a notice of any records that they would have to personally turn over, such as personal financial information, and would be given 120 days to produce them. The government also would have to begin a new initiative to address the backlog of pending reinvestigations. The new requirements would kick in once that backlog is cleared out, or after five years at the latest.