New Procedures Slated For Security Clearances Provisions designed to speed the processing of security clearances are included in the intelligence bill passed by Congress and awaiting President Bush’s signature. Title III of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Protection Act requires standard procedures to be used across the government in granting clearances and directs all agencies to recognize clearances granted by other agencies. Although a nine-year-old presidential order requires reciprocity among agencies, government officials and contractors say it has been widely ignored. The bill requires that a single agency be designated to handle investigations for the entire government, although some of the investigations could be delegated to a different agency. The lead agency is directed to devise a plan for speeding up processing of applications. The bill says 90% of applications should be approved or denied within 60 days, but it gives the government five years to reach that target. The lead agency must send Congress annual reports on its progress. The General Accounting Office reported that in 2003 it took more than a year, on average, to get a clearance from the Defense Department. The backlog of applications has grown to more than half a million, according to some accounts, because of increased demand for cleared personnel for defense and homeland security work. The administration is already moving to turn the vast majority of clearance investigations over to the Office of Personnel Management. OPM announced last month that 1,800 investigators and supervisors from the Defense Security Service will be transferred to OPM in February. Congress authorized the transfer more than a year ago, but OPM officials said it was delayed by issues of cost and by the need to train DSS employees. OPM awarded blanket purchase agreements in July to five contractors to process clearance applications. It said that would increase the number of investigators to 8,000 from the current 6,000 over the next three years.