The Office of Personnel Management director, Linda M.
Springer, has told Congress that after becoming responsible
for 90 percent of all federal background investigations,
OPM has begun to bring the massive backlog of cases under
control and is working faster to resolve high-priority cases.
Springer told the Senate federal workforce subcommittee that
the backlog of federal employees, job applicants and
government contractors waiting for background investigations
that lead to top-secret security clearances shrank this
year by 25 percent, and the average time to process the
highest-level priority cases was cut by 43 days, to a little
more than three months.
Springer also credited OPM’s Electronic Questionnaire for
Investigations Processing for improving the timeliness and
accuracy of information submitted for review.
OPM expects to perform about 1.4 million investigations this
year, most of which are for DoD’s military, civilian and
contractor work force. After hiring an additional 400
investigators since June of 2005, it now has an investigations
staff of about 8,400 employees.
