The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has agreed with a recommendation from GAO that it study the feasibility of agencies routinely obtaining federal debt information from Treasury for the purposes of investigating and adjudicating security clearance applicants, as well as for monitoring current clearance holders’ tax-debt status.
Close to five million civilian and military employees and contractors held a security clearance as of last October. Tax debt does not preclude an individual from holding a clearance but the government considers it a potential vulnerability.
Federal investigators primarily rely on applicants self-reporting tax debts and validation techniques, such as the use of credit reports or in-person interviews, but these approaches have limitations, according to GAO-13-733.
It said that additional mechanisms that provide large-scale, routine detection of federal tax debt could improve federal agencies’ ability to detect tax debts owed by security-clearance applicants and current clearance holders, but statutory privacy protections limit access to this information.
