Government plays catch-up on security clearances.

While hundreds of thousands of applications for security clearances are awaiting action, one contractor that investigates the applicants has laid off one-third of its staff because it was not given enough work to keep them busy.

Mantech MSM Security Services Inc., a unit of Mantech

At the Defense Department's request, Root said, the company had ramped up its capacity to handle as many as 400 investigations daily. But he said the Defense Security Service then scaled back the case load because it planned to turn DOD security investigations over to the Office of Personnel Management. OPM and its contractors handle investigations for civilian agencies.

That transfer has not yet occurred. OPM officials have said they cannot accept the responsibility for DOD investigations until DOD personnel can be trained on the OPM information systems. They also questioned the cost of the transfer. An OPM spokesman did not return calls seeking comment.

In recent weeks the backlog of applications for clearances reached 482,000, including government and contractor employees, Federal Times reported. The General Accounting Office found that it took an average of 375 days to get a clearance from the Defense Department last year. Requests for clearances have skyrocketed as defense and homeland security spending has grown over the past three years.

OPM announced July 23 that it has awarded new blanket purchase agreements to five contractors to process the clearances: Mantech MSM, CACI-PTI, Kroll Inc., Omniplex World Services Corp., and Systems Application and Technologies Inc.

OPM said the contractors would increase the number of investigators to 8,000 from the current 6,000 over the next three years. The agency said that is enough "to meet the demand."

But it will be months before new investigators can be trained and put into the field. Mantech's Root said OPM has scheduled his company's new hires for training in November.

Mantech MSM plans to move cautiously in filling the new positions. "We got caught holding the bag (before)," Root said in an interview. "We learned, and we will not ramp up in anticipation" until they know what the workload is going to be. Mantech reported it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter because of the problems with its Defense Security Service contract.

With no end to the backlog in sight, contractors acknowledge they are poaching one another's cleared employees and paying premiums for people with clearances. A survey by the Information Technology Association of America last spring found that most companies that responded were paying cleared employees at least 25% more than the usual salaries for their jobs.

At a House Government Reform Committee hearing in May, industry officials complained that federal agencies don't recognize clearances granted by other agencies. Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) said he would propose legislation to enforce reciprocity if the agencies don't do it themselves. (SAA, 5/14)