{"id":13630,"date":"2017-05-23T17:01:24","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T21:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lexingtoninstitute.org\/?p=13630"},"modified":"2017-05-23T17:01:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T21:01:24","slug":"one-year-waits-security-clearances-costing-washington-billions-forbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/one-year-waits-security-clearances-costing-washington-billions-forbes\/","title":{"rendered":"One-Year Waits For Security Clearances Are Costing Washington Billions (From Forbes)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The backlog of security clearances being processed by the Office of Personnel Management has grown to 570,000.\u00a0 On average, it takes over 500 days for OPM to make its initial determination as to whether it will grant a Top Secret clearance &#8212; and that isn&#8217;t even the end of the process.\u00a0 Obviously, such delays waste a lot of taxpayer money.\u00a0 If a military contractor hires a new engineer for $100,000 per year and there is a 300-day wait before a clearance is granted, the government is billed over $200,000 to cover the\u00a0expense of an under-productive employee&#8217;s salary and benefits.\u00a0 Multiply that by many tens of thousands of personnel awaiting clearances, add in the additional costs of program delays and other inefficiencies, and the you have the makings of a multi-billion-dollar problem.\u00a0 The system for conducting background checks and credentialing people working on sensitive programs needs to be reformed.\u00a0 Trade groups such as the Aerospace Industries Association could play a key role in pushing reforms forward during the Trump years.\u00a0 I have written a commentary for Forbes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/lorenthompson\/2017\/05\/23\/one-year-waits-for-security-clearances-are-costing-washington-billions\/#412cb19c6205\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The backlog of security clearances being processed by the Office of Personnel Management has grown to 570,000.\u00a0 On average, it takes over 500 days for OPM to make its initial determination as to whether it will grant a Top Secret clearance &#8212; and that isn&#8217;t even the end of the process.\u00a0 Obviously, such delays waste [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>One-Year Waits For Security Clearances Are Costing Washington Billions (From Forbes) - Lexington Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/one-year-waits-security-clearances-costing-washington-billions-forbes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One-Year Waits For Security Clearances Are Costing Washington Billions (From Forbes) - Lexington Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The backlog of security clearances being processed by the Office of Personnel Management has grown to 570,000.\u00a0 On average, it takes over 500 days for OPM to make its initial determination as to whether it will grant a Top Secret clearance &#8212; and that isn&#8217;t even the end of the process.\u00a0 Obviously, such delays waste [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/one-year-waits-security-clearances-costing-washington-billions-forbes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lexington Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-05-23T21:01:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lexingtoninstitute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/lex_share.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Loren B. 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