A new Intelligence and National Security Alliance white paper says delays in processing the transition of personnel with security clearances from one agency to another compromise the efficiency of more than 150,000 cleared contractors on an annual basis.
“Contractors typically support multiple contracts at multiple agencies, so they need their security clearance to be portable,” Larry Hanauer, vice president for policy at INSA, said in a statement published Thursday.
“The amount of time it takes for a cleared contractor to get approved to work at a second agency hinders the execution of contracts and undermines the government’s effectiveness,” added Hanauer.
The white paper offers five recommendations to improve security clearance mobility, including the need for the Department of Defense to designate a lead official to unify the processes, forms and performance to ensure that all DOD components comply with reciprocity policy or the goal of processing the movement of an employee’s security clearance from one agency to another within five days.
The reciprocity policy was established as part of the federal government’s Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative. The document also calls for the establishment of adjudication and reciprocity practices across DOD and the Intelligence Community.
Other recommendations in the INSA paper are providing industry security officers expanded access to clearance repositories to help them assess the whether contractor employees meet specific contract requirements; considering counterintelligence polygraphs sufficient in order for cleared personnel to kick off work while they wait to take more comprehensive polygraphs; and streamlining access to Sensitive Compartmented Information by adjudicating all Tier 5 investigations for SCI eligibility to make existing personnel immediately available for additional missions.
