The National Background Investigations Bureau released their first report in response to Public Law 115-173 (also known as the SECRET Act of 2018) and the numbers are staggering. Here is a quick look as of July 2018:
DoD Employees and Contractors
- 282,489 initial national security investigations (84,289 for Top Secret and 196,768 for Secret)
- 177,586 periodic reinvestigations (47,607 for Top Secret and 93,306 for Secret)
Other Federal Employees
- 235,861 initial national security investigations pending completion (65,110 for Top Secret and 170,751 for Secret)
- 136,464 periodic reinvestigations pending completion (67,013 for Top Secret and 69,451 for Secret)
Other Federal Contractors
- 77,719 initial national security investigations (32,877 for Top Secret and 44,842 for Secret)
- 81,257 periodic reinvestigations (52,390 for Top Secret and 28,867 for Secret)
The report also stated there are now 1,714 federal background investigators and 6,687 contractor field investigators tackling this mountain of investigations. I personally have seen recent T3 and T3Rs getting completed in 3 months, but these are obviously clean cases. The T5 and T5Rs are the ones taking the longest and many from over a year ago are just now starting to close.
To end on a positive note, things are slowly improving from the investigation completion side of the house, but little or no information is seen from the adjudications side of the house. Hopefully that is getting attention as well.
