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Writing about the Performance Accountability Council (PAC) work on Insider Threat and Security Clearance Reform, I admit I was wondering what would happen to all that work once January 20 arrived. Some might find some comfort knowing that before leaving the White House, President Obama signed an executive order to formalized a lot of the PAC’s security clearance reforms.
CHANGES
This final ink sling further amends President Bush’s Executive Order 13467 of June 2008, which reformed processes granting access to classified information, and is the capstone action of the increased scrutiny of the security clearance process which characterized President Obama’s tenure. The Administration last amended 13467 in September 2016.
The title of the 13467 amendment announces that the order is “to modernize the executive branch-wide governance structure and processes for security clearances, suitability and fitness for employment, and credentialing, and related matters.” FCW’s Sean D. Carberry summaries, “The intent of the 23-page order is to put in place a set of standards that will clear and vet government workers and contractors to work in ‘sensitive positions’ faster than the current system. It will also improve reciprocity and transferability of cleared workers from one agency to another.”
Altogether, the amendment revises 19 sections, adds seven sections, and deletes one section. 1.3(f), which formerly defined “contractor employee fitness.”
REVISIONS – doubling down on reform efforts
The 19 revisions begin with the preamble. The original Bush preamble was about 70 words; the amendment nearly doubles that length. The amendment goes beyond adding or changing a word here or there. While the Bush preamble announce the intention to “ensure an efficient, practical, reciprocal, and aligned system for investigating and determining suitability,” Obama’s preamble announces what comes across as a bolder, more specific intention characteristic of the broad changes in the clearance process we’ve seen most recently. That is “to strengthen and ensure a secure, efficient, timely, reciprocal, and aligned system for investigating and determining suitability or fitness for Government employment, fitness to work as a contractor or a nonappropriated fund employee, eligibility for access to classified information or to hold a sensitive position, and authorization to be issued a Federal credential, while providing fair, impartial, and equitable treatment, and protecting individual rights under the Constitution and laws of the United States”.
Likewise, the revision of Section 1.1, Policy, jumps from only 80 words to nearly eight times that length, adding four lengthy subsections. The first new subsection, 1.1(b) requires that “Government’s tools, systems, and processes for conducting these background investigations and managing sensitive investigative information should keep pace with technological advancements, regularly integrating current best practices to better anticipate, detect, and counter malicious activities, and threats posed by external or internal actors who may seek to do harm to the Government’s personnel, property, and information.” New subsection 1.1(c) directs employment of enhanced risk-management for the sake of earlier detection of insider threats, new subsection 1.1(d) directs investigation of new cleared employees and those who are to be retained, and the extensive 1.1(e) speaks to retention of investigative information in accordance with Privacy Act provisions.
ADDITIONS
The seven additions define or briefly characterize “continuous performance improvement,” “fitness” in relation to character and conduct, “investigation,” “vetting,” and “continuous vetting,” which opens the door for clearance review at any time. Continuous vetting is “reviewing the background of a covered individual at any time to determine whether that individual continues to meet applicable requirements.” And then there’s the big one: reciprocity.
Perhaps the most notable and important addition relates to reciprocity. This addition’s worth reading in full because it should mean more flexibility among cleared employees to move from federal agency to federal agency, from contract position to federal agency, and so forth: “Any additional requirements approved by the appropriate Executive Agent shall be limited to those that are necessary to address significant needs unique to the agency involved, to protect national security, or to satisfy a requirement imposed by law”.
