Several weeks ago it seemed you couldn’t turn on the news or pick up a newspaper without reading about White House staff members and their lack of having proper security clearances. “More than a year into office, the Trump administration reportedly still has dozens of officials working under interim security clearances,” wrote Norman Eisen. “In some cases, individuals with interim clearances had access to the nation’s highest level of intelligence information.”
While an interim clearance functions like a permanent clearance, it is unusual for interim clearances to drag on for months and this situation seemed to highlight the “high risk” backlog problem that has been an issue for quite some time, especially in regards to Top Secret clearances.
Back in the fall of 2016, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) implemented the Tier 5 background investigation process to replace the Single Scope Background Investigation (SSBI) in hopes that the new process would provide quality control and consistency on investigations for Top Secret clearances. In fact, one of the key components of the Tier 5 level was the addition of Continuous Evaluation (CE) which reevaluates individuals on a random or continuous basis in between investigations. This includes automated record checks for criminal history, civil court actions, financial liens, bankruptcies and credit checks, as well as a check of publicly accessible social media sites. Automating this process is designed to actually lessen the amount of fieldwork required in non-issue cases.
But, the timelines are still long. Defense Security Services Director Dan Payne feels “now is the time to be thinking beyond automation and streamlining of background checks, we also need to think about investigative standards”. “That’s an area where we can explore,” Payne said in an interview with Federal News Radio. “What we truly need to do is we need to take a look at what those adjudicative standards are, and look at in today’s day and age what are the best sources of information that we can go to. That’s the game changer, that’s the thing that can make a significant impact on a security clearance process. We have to take that step, we cannot continue to do things the way we are currently doing them.”
Regardless of what changes are made, experts agree we need to continue working on the overall process—it is vital to our national security.
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