A bill has been introduced in the Senate federal workforce subcommittee to require more detailed reporting on the security clearance process and to codify the Performance Accountability Council, established by the Bush administration to improve the clearance process.
Introduced by subcommittee chair Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and ranking member, George Voinovich, R-Ohio, the bill would require more complete reporting on the time it takes to process clearances – not just the average of the fastest 90 percent, as is currently measured by OMB.
It would require OMB to break down the numbers based on types of clearances and employee groups, and to report on which agencies are complying with reciprocal recognition of clearances.
"Problems with the federal government’s security clearance process have been documented since the 1990s," Voinovich said, adding that while "some progress has been made in the past few years to decrease the amount of time it takes to obtain a security clearance, more improvement is needed to fully reform the security clearance process."
