WASHINGTON, D.C. (Federal News Network) — Congressional scrutiny of the Department of Defense’s clearance backlogs comes as the Pentagon again asks civilian employees to volunteer for temporary immigration‑support deployments. Together, the moves highlight growing strain on the defense civilian workforce and the systems that support it.
Below is part of the interview transcript between The Federal Drive Host Terry Gerton and Tully Rinckey PLLC National Security Partner Dan Meyer.
Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about a couple of defense personnel issues today, and I want to start with the National Background Investigation Services. A recent House oversight hearing focused on the delays and management problems in this system. What did you hear from lawmakers at that hearing in terms of their concerns?
Dan Meyer So this is now probably the third or fourth reiteration of the background investigation failure issue. Most people probably remember back about 2015 or ’16, we had a Chinese hack into the background investigation files, the government had to buy lifetime credit repair services for a whole group of clearance holders. Even more important, the Chinese have those files even to this day, so they have a huge database of information, very sensitive information on our people. And there was an attempt to reform. It was decided that OPM was not up to the mission, so it moved it over to the Defense Department. And the Defense Department has struggled. They’ve struggled. You know, there are 72 separate adjudication systems, I think, within the executive branch. About 23 of them were loosely organized under DOD, but even the DOD intelligence agencies are separate from that. Then CIA is out on its own doing its thing. So there was an attempt late in the Biden administration, it was actually implemented last year, to get everybody on the same sheet of music now 20 years after we knew they needed to be on the sheet of the music. And now they’re trying to move forward. They’ve had equipment failures, they’ve had bad technology issues, they’ve an inability to keep talented senior people in leadership positions. The workforce is stressed out over there. The backlog seems to be pretty stable, but it’s long. And frankly, security officers are not all that empathetic to federal employees when it comes to the timing issue. You know, there’s 4.8 million security clearances. I think 2.2 million of those are TS/SCI. And then any one time I’ve heard there’s about 300,000 or so reviews in place, if somebody absolutely has to have a clearance, the system can figure out how to produce it. So they’re not worried about the average person. And this is not a customer-based service, getting a security clearance and maintaining one. It’s about the needs of the executive branch and, you know, from most Cabinet-level people, including sec war and the team, they feel like they’re getting good service. So, you know, Congress is upset because congressional constituency, usually employees and service members and contractors is upset. But the bottom line is the system is producing relatively well. It’s catching its mistakes. It will continue to improve incrementally and it’ll continue to have setbacks. So that’s generally what I was hearing out of the hearing.
Terry Gerton Well, you mentioned a number of challenges with the NBIS. It’s way behind, it’s significantly over cost, and it’s slow. Where do you see the impact showing up in day-to-day operations in defense, in civilian hiring, in mission execution?
Dan Meyer So it’s interesting, I don’t think it’s showing up in actual execution because we overclassified positions after 9/11. So far more people have clearances now than really need them. We give sensitive information out to people who don’t necessarily need to have it. We clear people who don t need to have it for their jobs. That’s quite common, particularly in DHS, not so much in DOD. But the bottom line is that the federal government is accomplishing its mission as the president has directed that mission to be accomplished. You know, there’s a bigger issue now that we had a quarter of a million federal employees leave last year than getting people cleared. But that is the problem, bringing new talented people in. Talented people — I’m not gonna say they’re high maintenance, but they are talented and they know they’re talented. And They are not going to wait around 14 to 18 months to get cleared so they can go to work. The government needs to use more interim clearances to get people in. They need to curry favor, frankly, with the talented workforce, because being a federal employee is not the be all end all that it was 15 years ago, because our federal employees have not been treated well and the word’s gotten out. So if anything, I think the problem is not on mission accomplishment. The problem is with talent acquisition. And this is the worst possible timing for it because the baby boom is finally checking out, okay. They’re, they’re going, going and gone. And so there’s a lot of people retiring. The deferred retirement, resignation program also helped move people out. So there’s been a record number of people leaving federal positions and those have to be restaffed, some percentage of them. I don’t think all of them are going to be restaffed. And the backlog does affect that. So it’s the talent acquisition I think is the government’s going to hurt the most.
