Managing DOE

Further Review Needed of Suspensions of Security Clearances for Minority Employees Gao ID: RCED-95-15 December 8, 1994

From fiscal year 1989 through fiscal year 1993, the Energy Department (DOE) suspended 425 security clearances for contractor employees at its Albuquerque, Savannah River, and Oak Ridge operations offices. At each of these locations, GO found that the clearances of African-Americans, Hispanics, or American Indians were suspended more often than would be statistically expected if the suspensions had been randomly distributed across racial/ethnic groups. DOE does not monitor suspensions of minority groups' security clearances and was unaware of the statistical disparities. GAO believes that DOE needs to further evaluate why these disparities are occurring.

GAO found that: (1) between fiscal years 1989 and 1993, DOE suspended 425 security clearances for contractor employees; (2) African-American, Hispanic, and American Indian contractor employees had their security clearances suspended more often than would be statistically expected when compared with the majority of the workforce; (3) DOE was not aware of the statistical disparities because it did not monitor or track the suspension of clearances by racial/ethnic group; and (4) DOE needs to further evaluate why disparities in security clearances are occurring to ensure that discrimination is not occurring.

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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