The newly reconstituted background investigations agency based out of the Pentagon has achieved a years-long goal of reaching a “steady state” of pending security clearance requests, according to lawmakers briefed Wednesday.
In October, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, or DCSA—formerly the Defense Security Service—officially absorbed the National Background Investigations Bureau, or NBIB. Formerly under the Office of Personnel Management, NBIB was created in 2016 in response to security concerns in the wake of the 2015 hack that exposed personal information on 21 million current, former and prospective federal employees and contractors.
Since that time, a backlog of pending investigation requests piled up, reaching a height of 725,000 in April 2018. Some defense contractors reported waiting 534 days for their employees’ security clearances to be processed.
Through staff increases and some automation, NBIB was able to whittle the backlog down to just over 300,000 before the Oct. 1 transfer to the Defense Department.
DCSA set a goal in October of reaching a steady state—in which the number of security clearances in the queue remains relatively flat over time—of about 200,000 by January.
“I am pleased to say that we are seeing significant improvements in the security clearance process. The investigation backlog has come down from 725,000 cases in early 2018 to a steady-state level of just over 200,000 today,” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement following a closed-door hearing. “With the backlog under bett ..
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