SECURITY CLEARANCE RECIPROCITY: Obstacles and Opportunities
SECURITY CLEARANCE RECIPROCITY: Obstacles and Opportunities INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY ALLIANCE Security Policy Reform Council June 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INSA expresses its appreciation to the INSA members and staff who contributed their time, expertise, and resources to develop this report. INSA MEMBERS INSA STAFF Mary Edington, KPMG Chuck Alsup, President Jeremy Erb, Deloitte Larry Hanauer, Vice President for Policy Laurel Pearson Lloyd, Peraton Peggy O’Connor, Director, Communications and Policy Kathy Pherson, Pherson Associates Ehrl Alba, Digital Marketing Manager Gregory Torres, Booz Allen Hamilton EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The movement of personnel with a security clearance across employers, federal contracts, and the Federal Government, is a common practice. However, government agencies’ policies, practices, and resource allocations impede the ability to move cleared federal contractors and federal employees from one agency to another, a practice primarily referred to as reciprocity. Delays caused by misinterpretation of policies and bureaucratic inefficiencies prevent cleared contractors from effectively executing their contracts and deprive the government of labor needed to advance critical national security missions. Reciprocity delays also result in unnecessary overhead costs for contractors that translate into higher contract rates. Although it is hard to quantify the impact, a rough calculation suggests that delays caused by administrative inefficiencies result each year in the loss of 1,000 contractor labor-years with a total value of $2 billion in the Intelligence Community alone. The cost to the federal government as a whole could approach 90,000 lost contractor labor- years valued at more than $8 billion. Adding the value of federal employees’ lost productivity would drive these figures even higher.
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