Page 3 - FCW, January/February 2020

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Security clearance backlog continues to drop
17,134
The backlog of security clearance inves- tigations had dropped from 725,000 cases in early 2018 to 231,000 as of a Jan. 22 hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. That rep- resents an improvement even over the 249,000 active cases reported by the White House last December.
The President’s Management Agenda sets a caseload of 200,000 active inves- tigations as its “steady-state inventory target.”
William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Secu- rity Center, said the speed of investi- gations has improved by 55% for the timeliness of secret clearances and 60% for top-secret clearances.
Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), chairman and vice chairman of the committee, respective- ly, called on the leaders of the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to fully implement the Trusted Work- force 2.0 program, which includes estab- lishing a continuous vetting process for current security clearance holders.
“We need a revolution in how the
executive branch thinks about security clearance reform and personnel vetting for those charged with safeguarding our nation’s most sensitive secrets,” War- ner said.
In his remarks, Evanina
said change is already taking
place. “New vetting policies,
such as updated investiga-
tive standards and adjudi-
cative guidelines, will be in coordination this calendar
year, with implementation
taking place in late 2022,”
he added. The effort will be
with next-generation IT, including “a new position designation tool and an electronic application capability.”
Evanina also said ODNI has imple- mented a continuous evaluation sys- tem that covers 300,000 people at 26 departments and agencies. That’s up from an enrolled population of 29,000 in November 2018, according to the latest Performance.gov update. The system “provides automated flags and alerts encompassing seven federally required data categories.”
Those categories weren’t described
federal retirement claims were received by OPM in January — the highest monthly total since December 2012
in detail, but in past hearings, lawmak- ers and security officials have said they’re looking for financial anomalies such as sudden large deposits and big- ticket purchases, unexplained inter- national travel and contacts, criminal charges, and other risk factors.
At a Feb. 4 event, Evanina announced that the intelligence community is merg- ing the processes for con- ducting security clearances and determining employee suitability for individuals that apply for cleared posi- tions. Candidates for jobs that require security clear- ances, such as those in the intelligence community, have traditionally had to undergo two separate review processes: one for a security clearance and another
for employee suitability.
“Historically, since the 1940s, you
would do one process then be thrown over the fence to do the other process. Now we’re merging the two,” Evanina said. “They will now be done at the same time because we found that when we were doing security clearances, we were often asking candidates the same questions that we did when we first hired them.”
— Adam Mazmanian and Lia Russell
“Historically, since the 1940s, you would do one process then be thrown over the fence to do the other process. Now we’re merging the two,”
— William Evanina
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3/3 Citizen engagement
OMB’s Amira Boland, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Charles
Worthington, CFPB’s Donna Roy and GSA’s Simchah Suveyke-Bogin are among the speakers at FCW’s Citizen Engagement Summit.
Washington, D.C.
FCW.com/citizen
3/13 CMMC
This Washington Technology Power Breakfast will detail the latest
developments in DOD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification initiative and what CMMC means for the federal contracting community.
Tysons Corner, Va.
WashingtonTechnology.com/CMMC
The 31st annual Federal 100 Awards Gala takes place March 19 in Washington, D.C. For details, go to Fed100.com.
January/February 2020 FCW.COM 3