Tag Archives: Office of Personnel Management

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of Personnel Management plan to implement policy changes under a new framework to speed up the vetting and security clearance procedures for federal personnel, Federal News Network reported Thursday. One of the changes ODNI and OPM will implement is reducing the number of tiers of background investigations from five to three: trusted/low-risk, secret and top secret.

The National Background Investigations Bureau is still running despite the partial government shutdown's effects on the Office of Personnel Management, Nextgov reported Wednesday. The bureau continues to run on funds that customer agencies pay for investigation work. The NBIB has managed to cut a backlog of 725,000 investigations down to 600,000 between April and the end of 2018.

Mark Robbins, acting chairman of the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, has been appointed to concurrently serve as general counsel of the Office of Personnel Management, the OPM said Friday.

The Department of Defense continues to make progress transferring the authority to process security clearances from the Office of Personnel Management to the agency. An official noted that the Pentagon is working with interagency partners to transfer the functions, personnel and resources of OPM’s National Background Investigations Bureau to the Defense Security Service, according to a statement posted Friday. 

David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, told Government Matters in an interview aired Tuesday about industry’s concerns once the Defense Department takes over the governmentwide program for security clearances from the Office of Personnel Management. Berteau mentioned some of those concerns, including the volume of the clearance backlog, background investigation process, funding and reciprocity.
 

A new report from the Government Accountability Office shows that the Office of Personnel Management has failed to help federal agencies access effective practices on performance management. Officials found that the OPM did not modernize its performance guidance to provide new information despite the changes in the performance management industry, the GAO said in the report.

Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent has said her office plans to launch programs that will help address gaps in the federal information technology workforce, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

The Office of Personnel Management seeks comments on a proposal to modify rules in direct hire authorities to address shortages in government IT employees.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the implementation of a Senate bill that would allow cybersecurity personnel in one federal civilian agency to work at another agency on a rotational and temporary basis would cost less than $500K annually from fiscal 2019 through fiscal 2023.

Recent data from the Federal IT Dashboard system has shown that agencies subjected to the Chief Financial Officers Act have made a total of 3,216 data center closures against the target goal of 4,477 shutdowns, MeriTalk reported Thursday.