Tech Touted in Clearance Reform

The Office of Personnel Management has increased the efficiency in which the government completes security clearances, completing 90 percent of background investigations in an average of 37 days, the agency's director told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs federal workforce subcommittee on Tuesday. In 2005, the average time needed to obtain a Top Secret security clearance was in excess of one year, Berry said, while today it is only 72 days.

The lengthy security clearance process has been considered by many to be a barrier to the timely appointment of new federal employees, and OPM acknowledged that it was able to streamline the process through leveraging technology. For example, 97 percent of investigation applications are submitted online, and OPM has electronically delivered more than 600,000 investigations this year to agencies, eliminating mail and handling time. The agency also has automated processing systems to an integrated suite of applications, allowing for secure and dependable Web-based interactions between security clearance applicants, their employing agencies and OPM.