The Office of Management and Budget has issued a memo
authored by director Josh Bolton delegating
responsibilities following the executive order to
facilitate the security clearance process.
According to the memo deputy director for management
Clay Johnson will be responsible for improving the
clearance process and will “gather relevant agency
officials in the near future to discuss the
administration’s goals and plans for improvement.”
“The Executive Order creates a framework for OMB to
work with the stakeholder agencies to streamline the
security clearance process,” said chairman of the
House Government Reform Committee, Tom Davis, R-Va.,
who added language to the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to create an
“oversight regime.” Such a system is needed, he said,
so policy is applied consistently and to set benchmarks
to cut backlog of requests.
The memo assigns responsibility for daily supervision
and monitoring of security clearance investigations to
the Office of Personnel Management — and gives the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
responsibility for personnel employed or working under
contract for an element of the intelligence community.
OMB said it will direct policy for and supervise OPM
and ODNI and that it would resolve policy
disagreements that arise.
