US Security Clearance Crisis: $4.6B System Years Late, Jobs in Limbo

At a hearing of the House Oversight subcommittee on Government Operations, lawmakers from both parties said the Department of Defence's National Background Investigative Services System, known as NBIS, has become a test of whether the US can protect secrets while hiring fast enough to compete in technology and national security.

"If the topic of today's discussion sounds familiar, it should," Chairman Congressman Pete Sessions said, recalling a June 2024 hearing where "Congress raised serious concerns about persistent failures in personnel vetting".

Sessions said NBIS was meant to be "a one-stop shop for all phases of federal personnel vetting", but "today, NBIS has deployed only limited capacities and capabilities" and is "more than eight years behind schedule with completion delayed from 2019 to 2028".

He said delays have "cost the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars" and raised questions about "the safety and reliability of all aspects of the federal personnel vetting system".

Ranking member Kweisi Mfume said the goal was "straightforward, deliver a background check system that keeps the United States of America safe", while also ensuring it "gets qualified people to work without delay".

"America, in my opinion, cannot hope to maintain our technological advantage in the national security space if we make the best engineers, scientists, linguists, analysts, and others spend months. If not years, sometimes in limbo before they can serve," Mfume said. "And if we can't clear people, we can't complete our missions, it's very, very simple."

Mfume said the government has spent "about $ 2.4 billion on NBIS and legacy sustainment" since 2017, and the department projects "about another 2.2 billion is needed to finish the job". "It's an enormous amount of money for the government to spend on anything and have so very, very little to show for it," he said.

Justin Overbaugh, acting director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, pushed back on earlier assurances that the agency was on track. "Respectfully, that assessment was too optimistic," he said.

"The truth is DCSA has been an agency in the midst of an identity crisis," Overbaugh said, arguing it was "cobbled together from disparate programs" and "never, truly self-actualized or forged a unified culture". He said previous leadership drifted "towards an intelligence-focused entity rather than embracing its vital security mission".

Overbaugh called the delivery of Trusted Workforce 2.0 and NBIS "non-negotiable" and said recent progress was "fragile". He promised a shift from "a sclerotic compliance-based bureaucracy to a customer-centric business-oriented entity", and told lawmakers, "My commitment to you is that I will continue to foster a culture of innovation and accountability."

Alissa Czyz of the Government Accountability Office said reform is "urgently needed," and the clearance process remains too slow. "For example, it takes over 200 days to grant a top secret clearance," she said. "This is 80 % longer than the government's goal."

Czyz said DCSA now has "a reliable cost estimate for NBIS for the first time ever", but warned that the schedule "is still not reliable, putting NBIS at risk of further delays".

The US security-clearance system is central to Washington's defence-industrial machine, which depends on cleared personnel across government and private contractors. After the 2015 breach, the federal government began shifting towards modernised vetting and continuous evaluation.

- IANS