The Defense Department has called on Congress to reinstate DoD’s oversight over security clearance processing work and cited the availability of information technology systems that can be used to manage new background checks for its own personnel, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.
Garry Reid, director of defense intelligence, told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s government operations subpanel members Wednesday that DoD could resume responsibility over its own security clearances as early as January.
“Our plan is to alleviate the burden on the backlog in the near-term by shifting that work into an alternative process focusing on the secret-level investigations,†Reid said at the congressional hearing.
Reid added that DoD hands over approximately 700,000 investigative cases to the National Background Investigations Bureau on an annual basis in which two-thirds of those cases are at the secret level, preliminary and periodic reinvestigation.
Established in January 2016, NBIB oversees 95 percent of all security clearance work in the federal government.
DoD said it plans to manage new investigative cases through the adoption of IT platforms the Pentagon currently uses to monitor employee performance and behavior and continue to develop and operate IT systems for NBIB.
