Long-standing backlogs and delays in determining Department
of Defense security clearance for industry personnel persist,
as do their adverse effects, the General Accounting Office
has said.
It said that as of September 30, 2003, industry workers held
about one-third of the approximately 2 million DoD-issued
security clearances and that the backlog was roughly
188,000 cases, according to estimates by the Defense
Security Service, the agency responsible for administering
DoD’s personnel security investigations program.
According to DDS, the backlog consists of over 61,000
reinvestigations — required for renewing clearances —
that were overdue but had not been submitted to DSS, over
101,000 new DSS investigations or reinvestigations that
had not been completed within DOD’s established time
frames, and over 25,000 cases awaiting adjudication —
a determination of clearance eligibility — that had
not been completed within DoD’s established time frames.
A large number of new clearance requests is contributing
to the backlog along with an increase in labor-intensive
top-secret requests, inaccurate workload projections and
an imbalance between workforces and workloads, said GAO.
It also said DoD still lacks an integrated, comprehensive
management plan for addressing the backlog and delays,
but it is considering a phased, periodic reinvestigation,
establishing a single adjudicative facility for industry,
and reevaluating investigative standards and adjudicative
guidelines.