The Government Accountability Office has said it is
encouraged by the Office of Management and Budget’s
commitment to overseeing the development – with the Office
of Personnel Management — of the government’s plan to
address long-standing problems with the federal security
clearance process, but its praise was qualified by a number
of factors.
GAO said the plan includes elements of a comprehensive
strategic plan such as metrics for monitoring the
timeliness of the clearance process, but that in some
cases the plan does not provide details on specific
actions or their projected completion dates.
Further, the plan sometimes fails to give details on the
resources required to accomplish its objectives, and does
not describe potential risks or mitigation plans for them,
according to GAO-06-233T.
It said that the plan’s metrics for assessing
clearance-processing speed focus on some phases of the
process and do not emphasize others, such as the adjudication
phase.
The plan devotes little attention to monitoring and
improving the quality of the security clearance process,
insufficiently measuring that as a percentage of
investigations returned to agencies due to incomplete
case files, according to GAO.
It said additional statistics such as the number of
counterintelligence leads generated from security clearance
investigations could be needed.
