Some progress has been made addressing challenges to the
Department of Defense personnel clearance process after
1,800 DoD investigators were transferred to the Office of
Personnel Management in February, but the Government
Accountability Office says some “hurdles remain” to
removing the clearance process from its high-risk list.
It said delays in completing investigations are continuing
— in February of 2003 DoD had a backlog of 90,000 – and
that in February of 2005 OPM reported that over 185,000
investigations had missed timeliness goals.
GAO called OPM’s effort to add additional investigative
staff “a positive step,” but noted that adding personnel
could result in further delays and concerns over
performance as they get up to speed.
However, OPM’s workload should decrease due to the
elimination of certain requirements for reinvestigations
for personnel updating clearances as well as requiring
agencies to accept one another’s clearances, according to
GAO-05-842T.
It said DoD has had difficulty monitoring who had been
adjudicated and when they were up for renewal, and that
while a joint personnel adjudication system has combined
databases from DoD’s 10 adjudicative facilities, “wider
consolidation of government databases may be required.”
The report also calls on to integrate federal agencies
into a government-wide database — as required by a recent
law.
