The Obama administration is requiring agencies to pay a proportionate share of the costs of notifying employees affected by the breach of OPM’s security clearance database and providing credit monitoring, identity theft protection and other services to them.
That directive imposes an unexpected obligation to find funding not only in 2016 and 2017, but also in the current fiscal year–raising questions regarding what to cut, with barely two months left.
A memo from OPM acting director Beth Cobert says that the cost shares by agency are still being worked out, and that even the grand total is still uncertain, pending issuance of a contract to provide that notice and service to some 21.5 million persons affected by that breach. OPM said it expects to be more definitive shortly.
For comparison, a similar earlier contract for about 4.2 million persons affected by a breach of personnel files in Interior Department computers under contract to OPM came to about $21 million. The memo said that while OPM and Interior footed the cost of the first contract, they cannot do the same with the second.
