Federal Manager's Daily Report

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.

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