GAO: Approach Clearance Reform More Broadly

A closer look at the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) latest report on security clearance reform is especially notable for recommending ways to quantify reforms beyond simply measuring wait-times for clearance approvals. GAO says that greater confidence in the “quality” of the clearance process is necessary, in part to “achieve fuller reciprocity” – that is, mutual acceptance of clearances across federal agencies. This is welcome news to those who support a more accountable and transparent security clearance process.

GAO reminds security clearance program evaluators that they ought to consider “customer perceptions about [clearance] investigations and internals controls to protect against fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.” If followed, such standards of examination should help ensure greater fairness, accountability, and transparency in the security clearance process, all of which have slipped in importance while clearance reform has focused instead on timeliness issues. Most recently, GAO notes that the October 2007 Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report on clearance reforms:

had only one type of metric listed under the heading about how success [of security clearance process modernization] will be gauged. Specifically, the plan said that ‘performance of [Intelligence Community] agency personnel security programs meet or exceed [federal] guidelines for clearance case processing times.” [emphasis added]

Other important points in the GAO report:

• The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act of 2007 (P.L. 109-364) requires that the Department of Defense (DoD) report annually on personnel security investigations;

• In July 2007, a cross-agency Security Clearance Process Reform Team was established to design a future security clearance system;

• Prerequisites to issuing a Top Secret clearance include electronic data-gathering as well as inverviews with the subject of the investigation request, references in the workplace, and neighbors;

• The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 requires that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issue a report, the last of which was dated February 2007, of the Security Clearance Oversight Committee, an interagency working group. The group includes representatives of OMB, DoD, DHS, Energy, Justice, Transportation, Commerce, State, DNI, National Security Council, and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Filed Under: Reform, Laws & Regulations, Procedures