Although the high-level leadership and governance structure of the current  reform effort distinguish it from previous efforts, it is difficult to gauge  progress of reform, or determine if corrective action is needed, because  the council, through the Joint Reform Team, has not established a method  for evaluating the progress of the reform efforts. Without a strategic  framework that fully addresses the long-standing security clearance  problems and incorporates key practices for transformation—including  the ability to demonstrate progress leading to desired results—the Joint  Reform Team is not in a position to demonstrate to decision makers the  extent of progress that it is making toward achieving its desired outcomes,  and the effort is at risk of losing momentum and not being fully  implemented. Therefore, we recommended that the OMB Deputy Director of  Management, in the capacity as Chair of the Performance Accountability  Council, ensure that the appropriate entities—such as the Performance  Accountability Council, its subcommittees, or the Joint Reform Team— establish a strategic framework for the joint reform effort to include (1) a  mission statement and strategic goals; (2) outcome-focused performance  measures to continually evaluate the progress of the reform effort toward  meeting its goals and addressing long-standing problems with the security  clearance process; (3) a formal, comprehensive communication strategy  that includes consistency of message and encourages two-way  communication between the Performance Accountability Council and key  stakeholders; (4) a clear delineation of roles and responsibilities for the  implementation of the information technology strategy among all agencies  responsible for developing and implementing components of the  information technology strategy; and (5) long-term funding requirements  for security clearance reform, including estimates of potential cost savings  from the reformed process that are subsequently provided to decision  makers in Congress and the executive branch. In addition to limited visibility over timeliness of clearances, the executive  branch’s annual reports to Congress on the personnel security clearance  process have provided decision makers with limited data on quality, and  the executive branch has missed opportunities to make the clearance  process transparent to Congress. For example, we independently  estimated that 87 percent of about 3,500 investigative reports prepared  by OPM that DOD adjudicators (employees who decide whether to grant a  clearance to an applicant based on the investigation and other  information) used to make clearance decisions, for initial top secret  clearances adjudicated in July 2008, were missing required documentation. Because neither  OPM nor DOD measures the completeness of their investigative reports or  adjudicative files, both agencies are limited in their ability to explain the  extent to which or the reasons why some documents are incomplete. Incomplete documentation may lead to increases in the time needed to  complete the clearance process and in the overall costs of the process and  may reduce the assurance that appropriate safeguards are in place to  prevent DOD from granting clearances to untrustworthy individuals. We  have stated that timeliness alone does not provide a complete picture of  the clearance process and emphasized that attention to quality could  increase reciprocity—accepting another federal entity’s clearances—and  the executive branch, though not required to include information on  quality in its annual reports, has latitude to report appropriate information. We are encouraged that, while the 2009 report did not provide any data on  quality, unlike previous reports it did identify quality metrics that the  executive branch proposes to collect.
Why GAO Did This Study

This testimony discusses the key recommendations from the two reports we recently released, which include (1) the need for a fully developed strategic framework for the reform process that includes outcome-focused performance measures to show progress and (2) more transparency in annually reporting to Congress on the timeliness and quality of the clearance process. This testimony is based on our review of the Joint Reform Team's plans, as well as our work on DOD's security clearance process, which includes reviews of clearance-related files and interviews of senior officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), DOD, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and OPM. In addition, this statement is based on key practices and implementation steps for mergers and organizational transformations. We conducted our work on both reports between March 2008 and May 2009 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

What GAO Found

Although the high-level leadership and governance structure of the current reform effort distinguish it from previous efforts, it is difficult to gauge progress of reform, or determine if corrective action is needed, because the council, through the Joint Reform Team, has not established a method for evaluating the progress of the reform efforts. Without a strategic framework that fully addresses the long-standing security clearance problems and incorporates key practices for transformation--including the ability to demonstrate progress leading to desired results--the Joint Reform Team is not in a position to demonstrate to decision makers the extent of progress that it is making toward achieving its desired outcomes, and the effort is at risk of losing momentum and not being fully implemented. In addition to limited visibility over timeliness of clearances, the executive branch's annual reports to Congress on the personnel security clearance process have provided decision makers with limited data on quality, and the executive branch has missed opportunities to make the clearance process transparent to Congress. For example, we independently estimated that 87 percent16 of about 3,500 investigative reports prepared by OPM that DOD adjudicators (employees who decide whether to grantclearance to an applicant based on the investigation and other information) used to make clearance decisions, for initial top secret clearances adjudicated in July 2008, were missing required documentation. Because neither OPM nor DOD measures the completeness of their investigative reports or adjudicative files, both agencies are limited in their ability to explain the extent to which or the reasons why some documents are incomplete. Incomplete documentation may lead to increases in the time needed to complete the clearance process and in the overall costs of the process and may reduce the assurance that appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent DOD from granting clearances to untrustworthy individuals. We have stated that timeliness alone does not provide a complete picture of the clearance process and emphasized that attention to quality could increase reciprocity--accepting another federal entity's clearances--and the executive branch, though not required to include information on quality in its annual reports, has latitude to report appropriate information. We are encouraged that, while the 2009 report did not provide any data on quality, unlike previous reports it did identify quality metrics that the executive branch proposes to collect.