In mid-August Personnel Security Management Office for Industry (PSMO-I) , the branch of DSS that processes the investigation applications and grants interim security clearances for DoD, will no longer grant interims based on the review of the SF-86. Instead, they will wait for the results of the Advanced National Agency Check (NAC) to come back before making a decision. As I have noted previously, one of the checks that have held up the completion of investigations is the FBI name check which is submitted as a part of the NAC. PSMO-I are aware of this issue and have decided the name check portion of the NAC will only be required if there is a hit on the NAC. With this change PSMO-I anticipates that it will take an average of 35 days to get an Interim Secret security clearance.

If 35 days seems like a long time to wait for an interim security clearance, you’re right. The standard, per DSS, used to be a mere five days. But that was before insider threat initiatives and serious budget shortfalls. You can read more at ClearanceJobs.com.

Periodic Reinvestigations Update

DSS received the funding from Congress to process initial and periodic reinvestigations (PR) through the end of F& 2017. Companies were previously instructed to stop submitting PRs due to the lack of funding and the current backlog has grown to over 21,000. However, DoD has not yet implemented the change for Secret clearance holders to undergo a reinvestigation every 5 years. Many other non-DoD agencies have already implemented this change, so when DoD does finally implement the change it will add to the current backlog. No news has come out of the new agency (NBIB) that will take over from OPM to assume responsibility for these processes. Hopefully someone somewhere realizes the enormity of the problems and is working hard and a sensible solution.