WASHINGTON, May 22 (UPI) -- The Defense Department stopped accepting security clearance requests from industry personnel on April 28, according to a new government report.
DOD attributed its actions, in part, to an overwhelming volume of requests from industry personnel security investigations, according to a May 17 report from the Government Accountability Office.
There are approximately 2 million active security clearances in the Defense Department, one-third of them belonging to industry personnel who need access to classified information to perform their jobs.
The Defense Department has a history of backlogs in security investigations -- the GAO declared it a "high risk" area in January 2005 -- to the point that the Pentagon turned over responsibility for background investigations to all but military and DOD civilian applications to the Office of Personnel Management.
According to the GAO, that arrangement is not working well, in large part because of communications problems between DOD and OPM.
OPM has been reluctant to share information about how it conducts its security investigations, making it difficult for the Defense Department to adjudicate clearances, according to the GAO.
Moreover, OPM's domestic investigative staff is relatively inexperienced and it does not have a large enough overseas presence to handle the case load it is assigned.
"OPM reports that they are making progress in hiring and training new investigators, however, they have also noted it will take a couple of years for the investigative workforce to reach desired performance levels," according to the report.
DOD and OPM are also engaged in a billing dispute regarding the work performed for DOD. The Pentagon has paid OPM nearly $200 million in the last year for the work.
