It looks as though the time it takes to carry out a federal background investigation for security clearances is dropping, according to report prepared by a security clearance oversight group, though it said the time it actually takes from start to finish still isn’t fully accounted for.
The government has been processing about 1.9 million requests for background investigations each year at the glacial pace of about one year for top-secret clearances or half a year for secret-confidential clearances.
However, as of February 3, over half — 63 percent — of the nearly 50,000 investigations initiated during October 2006 had been completed through the initial background investigation phase, the report said, adding that at current rates up to 80 percent would be completed in an average of 90 days, as called for by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
The act also called for clearance requests submitted at the end of 2006 to be carried out in 30 days or less for the adjudication and it appears those targets are being met.
For 117,054 initial adjudications completed and recorded during the first quarter of fiscal 2007, 80 percent averaged 17 days to process, and the average time for all was 39 days, while the Department of Defense, which accounts for 93 percent of this activity, averaged 18 days for 80 percent of the more than 100,000 actions reported.
All investigations completed by OPM in fiscal 2007 so far have averaged 166 days for initial clearances. The average in 2004 was 205 days, 188 days in 2005 and 176 in 2006.
The report noted that the performance statistics don’t include various steps in the process that could add substantially to the total time, such as the time spent in transferring records back and forth among the hiring, investigative and adjudicating authorities.
