Reforms Also Pending in Congress

The security clearance policy in some ways mirrors ideas already proposed in Congress. For example, several Democratic senators recently introduced legislation to give the force of law to law a recent policy decision by OPM to require federal employees, not contractor employees, review and approve background investigations that were in turn performed by the contractor. Without a change in law, OPM’s recent decision to take over the final reviews could be reversed by a future agency director, the sponsors said in introducing the bill. And a bipartisan plan offered last year would require an automated search of public records and databases for information on every individual with a security clearance at least twice, at random times, every five years. The searches would involve information relating to any criminal or civil legal proceeding and certain financial information, as well as any publicly-available information that suggests ill intent, vulnerability to blackmail, compulsive behavior, allegiance to another country, or change in ideology of the covered individual. A recently enacted bill allowed the OPM IG to use resources from the agency’s revolving fund to more thoroughly investigate cases where the integrity of the background check process may have been compromised.