The Slow Path to Top Secret Clearance

Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY STEVE DAVIS

           

Private companies in the United States that have federal government contracts at a classified level face common problems in obtaining timely employee background clearances from the authorizing government agency. These problems include:

• Lack of consistency

  The form an applicant must complete to initiate the personnel security investigation process differs from agency to agency. A contracting company must establish independent data storage systems for each employee under a particular government program and possibly designate separate cleared security employees to manage separate systems. It's an overhead and capital cost issue that often cannot be charged back to the government agency.

• Confirmation and tracking

  After an employee completes a background form, many companies run into problems in the submission process. Some agencies have an electronic verification process to allow a contracting company to check the submission status or receipt of a form, but other agencies have no receipt confirmation process or mechanism, and the only way a contracting company can verify receipt is by phone. Similar problems also complicate the tracking process. Some security departments have called an authorizing agency to check the status of a submitted request, only to find that the agency has no record of the employee, of the form or of an active investigation. This disconcerting admission means that the submission process must begin anew.

• Delay

  Assuming that an employee's submitted form is successfully received by the appropriate government agency and a personnel security investigation is initialized and moves forward, another huge roadblock awaits: completion time. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which conducts background investigations for private contractors, does not maintain enough investigative staff to handle its cases in a timely manner.

  In too many instances, industry has found that it takes more than six months to get an employee cleared to the Secret level, and up to one-and-a-half years to get an employee cleared to the Top Secret level.

  Is there a remedy? The federal government is aware of the problem and included a requirement for OPM to reduce the length of time required to complete background investigations in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Under these requirements, the OPM has made progress, but the adjudication stage of the process is still painfully slow.

  Here are two things private contractors can do to speed the process:

• Establish personal relationships with the government customer who might be able to expedite the process.

• Try to find workers with the appropriate skill sets and a clearance in place.

Steven Davis is vice president of global security for Qualcomm Inc. and a member of the Security Executive Council (csoexecutivecouncil.com).

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