Personnel Clearances: Key Factors for Reforming the Security Clearance Process

Book excerpt: Efforts to reform personnel security clearance processes should consider, among other things, the following four key factors: (1) a strong requirements-determination process, (2) quality in all clearance processes, (3) metrics to provide a fuller picture of clearance processes, and (4) long-term funding requirements of security clearance reform. In February 2008, GAO noted that a sound requirements process is important because requesting a clearance for a position in which it will not be needed, or in which a lower-level clearance would be sufficient, will increase both costs and investigative workload unnecessarily. For example, the cost of obtaining and maintaining a top secret clearance for 10 years is approximately 30 times greater than the cost of obtaining and maintaining a secret clearance for the same period. Also, changing a position's clearance level from secret to top secret increases the investigative workload for that position about 20-fold.