DOD Personnel

In January 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced a backlog of 505,000 overdue reinvestigations. DOD now lacks an information system that can routinely track and report on the status of security clearances; thus it cannot identify when security clearances are due to be updated, project the investigative workload, or know the extent of the reinvestigation backlog. Without readily available information, DOD has estimated the backlog by manual counting and statistical sampling. Recent attempts using these methods produced estimates that were six months old or older and did not include thousands of overdue reinvestigations that had been submitted. Coincidentally, two recent studies arrived at similar estimates--about one overdue reinvestigation for every five persons with a security clearance. To address this problem, DOD has set goals to eliminate the backlog, required the services and DOD agencies to formulate plans to meet the goals, and expanded DOD's investigative capacity by shifting some Defense Security Service workload to the Office of Personnel Management. It also plans to implement a new personnel security database.

GAO noted that: (1) in the absence of a Department-wide database that can accurately measure the reinvestigation backlog, DOD estimates the backlog on an ad-hoc basis, using two primary methods--manual counts and statistical sampling; (2) using the counting method, the military services and Defense agencies ask security managers to review their personnel and count those overdue for a reinvestigation; (3) the counts are totalled to provide a DOD-wide backlog estimate; (4) using the sampling method, DOD makes a rough--and known to be inaccurate--estimate from existing personnel security databases; (5) it then selects a random sample of individuals from this estimate and surveys them to determine whether they are associated with DOD, require a security clearance, and are overdue for a reinvestigation; (6) DOD uses this information and statistical analysis to develop a refined and more accurate estimate; (7) DOD's two most recent estimates each used a different method and arrived at similar results--about one of every five individuals with a security clearance is overdue for a reinvestigation; (8) however, both estimates had methodological limitations, were 6 months old or older by the time they were reported, and excluded thousands of overdue reinvestigations because they used a restricted backlog definition; (9) using the counting method, DOD reported that the backlog totalled 505,786, however, the estimate's accuracy is questionable; (10) using the sampling method, a DOD contractor estimated the backlog to be between 451,757 and 558,552, however, the contractor did not verify certain data; (11) DOD recognizes that the reinvestigation backlog is a problem; (12) after not making progress in meeting an earlier goal to eliminate the backlog, the services and other Defense agencies, at the direction of the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the DOD Comptroller, have begun to formulate plans to eliminate the backlog by March 31, 2002; (13) DOD also plans to implement a new personnel security database in mid-2001; (14) among other things, the database is designed to include information that could allow real-time counts of overdue reinvestigations; and (15) however, DOD has not specified how it plans to ensure that future reinvestigation requests are submitted when they are due or use the information in the new personnel security database system to help manage the reinvestigation program.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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