ODNI Meets Reciprocity Milestone for Security Clearance Reform Plan

The Government Reform Plan laid out by the White House and the Office of Management and Budget in March 2017 directed the Government to reform and become more efficient, effective, and accountable. The President’s Management Agenda (PMA) outlined Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goals in key areas with a timeline for implementation. According to the milestone progress summary published in September, the Office of the Director of National Security was on track to issue an Executive Branch-wide reciprocity policy for national security/sensitive positions by December 2018.

Security Executive Agent Directive (SEAD) 7, Reciprocity of Background Investigations and National Security Adjudications was published effective November 9, 2019 and established requirements for reciprocal acceptance of background investigations and national security adjudications.

Reciprocal acceptance of clearances became quite muddled amid all of the confusion with periodic reinvestigation guidance and conflicting reciprocity standards between agencies (e.g., State Department, DHS, IC, DoD). The purpose of SEAD 7 is to require all government agencies to adhere to the principle that adjudicative criteria are applied the same across the board and a favorable decision for one agency should mean the same to another agency. As noted in many posts on ClearanceJobsBlog.com, reciprocity acceptance across different agencies is still an issue. State Department seems to be the most difficult to deal with when transferring  from another agency, as are some of the Intelligence Community agencies. Hopefully this directive will resolve some of the difficulties experienced by clearance holders when moving around for jobs within various agencies.