The short answer is, it depends! Go here and see Section 4: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2009-01-22/pdf/E9-1574.pdf
How come some Subject interview are early in the process and some are later?
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Hello Mr. Hakamaa
Does the current enormous investigation backlog also apply to the Intel agencies which we know that they conduct their own investigations? The reason I’m asking coz I’m in my 16th month time frame.
SF86 submitted: 12/2015
Poly: 09/2016
And nothing happened between these dates or after 09/2016. So is this timeline sounds normal for an intel clearance?
Thanks in advance
Some IC do use their own investigators, and some use OPM to do the legwork and then conduct follow-on interviews. I have no information on their backlogs, only that agency, mission, and position for which an individual is hired for dictates the priority. It is not unheard of for investigations to take a year or more, and then wait in the queue for adjudication. Not helpful I know, but the only thing to do is wait and do the occasional follow-up with the agency POC.
Thank you for your feedback. Apparently there’s not much we can do about it but sit back, relax and enjoy the wait.
I find the “must be able to get a TS/S clearance” requirement laughable. As if any of us KNOW we can get a clearance let alone how many months (years) it might take. Posting a requirement like this is purely to narrow the field of applicants for HR. I’m still chuckling…
I’d encourage people before accepting any type of offer to (1) ask if they’ll be able to do unclassified work while waiting on an interim or final adjudication, (2) clarify the type of clearance required, (3) acknowledge you can be let go for reasons not under your control and before you even start working, and (4) have a back up plan. The backlog isn’t going away anytime soon, and if you’re not priority personnel, you’re SOL.
What drives me nuts is HR acts as the main point of contact for these types of questions and many of them lack the knowledge/insight security personnel have… and they of course have to recruit and retain candidates. Try and get responses from security, folks, not HR.
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I just got notice that my interim is complete for TS. I also was informed that they are hoping that the completion will be set in another couple months. I will let you know if that is true.
Trying to get an interim secret with current company that I left a civilian job to turn contractor. Former Agency where I held a TS/SCI clearance provided security clearance information to DoDCAF on December 21, 2016. Company requested adjudication and reciprocity on December 22, 2016 to get interim clearance for Army. Status is Open but not determination of eligibility to date. My supervisor and general manager filled out paperwork for OPM about 2 weeks ago on me but still waiting.
Has anyone seen the latest performance report from NBIB for Q1 2017?
I have some updates:
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I contacted one congress person over this issue. I hand delivered a letter to their local staff. That seemed to help. They sent a letter to OPM, who responded and a 6 weeks later I got copies of letters from both OPM and the congressional office.
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Spoke with my future manager and HR yesterday. They said that OPM dropped the applications for ~20 people who had entered the system before November 2015. Anyone heard about this? The company is working with OPM to get more information about this. Apparently the candidates were notified. At this point it is unclear if OPM was at fault or if these folks were rejected over security concerns.
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My only worry for my application is that I have an extensive internet trail. I am a blogger, focusing on US fusion research. I have written and commented extensively on the current state of this technology.
My investigator notified me during the subject interview that he was given a deadline of 30 days.
Do they usually manage to keep to the deadline?
I think the individual investigators are under a lot of pressure to meet deadlines. But keep in mind that this could be but one part of the entire clearance process. He will submit his investigation, it will probably sit in somebody’s queue to be reviewed before it is sent to the requesting agency (OPM or whoever), and once all the field work is done, it has to go sit in a queue to be adjudicated.
In short, that investigator will probably wrap up his piece in 30 days, but there’s a lot of other stuff yet to happen.
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Thanks for the info.
I’m hoping I don’t get stuck in the infamous investigation/adjudication limbo.
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Oh, you’ll get stuck alright, just hope it is not a very long wait.
Interesting article on news.clearancejobs.com about the reasons for the clearance backlog. And if their reasons are correct, I don’t think it is going to get cleared up quickly.
I’ve been looking for it, has it been released yet?
Also, I have some information you guys might find helpful. Been waiting since 8 August 2016 for a Secret clearance. In February got fed up and sent a letter to my congressman asking for assistance. About a month later I got a reply from him with an attached letter from Charles Phalen (director NBIB). He said they are aware of his interest in my case and have expedited the remaining work and contacted DODCAF and again notified them of my congressman’s interest in my case.
I got a call from OPM On 21 March just to update my info and let me know that I will be getting an interview. She also lets me know that he had a deadline 3 weeks later to get it done. 3 days before deadline, I get a call from a background investigator. We set up an appointment for the day of the deadline (12 April).
The guy was super nice, he was a contract investigator for keypoint, former USIS. I took the opportunity to grill him about the clearance process, as I had done a ton of research about it and had a lot of questions. He was happy to answer them and tell me the background workings of the investigation process.
Some things I learned:
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They basically select from a queue of available work in the area, and he just happened to select mine earlier that month. He didn’t know anything about the NBIB letter/expediting.
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They have a sheet with a list of all the background checks that were done on you, with their status/completed. It was quite long, probably two pages and i’d say at least 10-15 items. He looked at it and said all the work besides the subject interview and contacting my friends were done.
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He said my interview was a “triggered” subject interview, and he even gave me the trigger code. It was due to a dual citizenship I had revoked earlier. (I thought for sure it was a drug thing)
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He said the 4 other companies have basically not done any work yet, that Keypoint/OPM are still handling the large majority of the work.
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The NBIB change from FIS basically just re-labeled the investigations, BI and SSBI became part of a Tier 1-5 system. They also have some slight differences, like the amount of people they have to talk to.
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He told me a horror story of someone recently that was held up for months for a priority top secret clearance. A company can pay ~$5,500 to expedite the clearance and get the top secret clearance done in about a month. All the work was done and it was sent to the OPM computer system. After the kid didn’t hear back for a long time, my investigator checked and it turned out be something along the lines of his application was sitting in the system waiting for a PF (personnel file) to be sent through, a process that he said took 3 seconds on their end but he couldn’t do anything about it. Because of this I think there should be a way for people to check on their status directly with OPM and make sure there is nothing holding them up. The freedom information line is not this as federal contractors cannot call it.
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The best thing I learned is that he completed an investigation and sent it in on 3 April for someone, and he got a text from them 7 days later on 10 April that they recieved their clearance. Apparently adjudication for some cases takes not even a week.
In any case, it has been a week since my interview, he said he would send it in Friday and it would take them about a week to recieve it/send it to DODCAF. He said I will definitely know by the end of the month if not sooner.
It was supposed to be released on the 7th April 2017… but like everything else it probably has been delayed as well…
Wow… this is very different from what I went through. I also had duel citizenship and have my interview march 27th. My investigation is not even completed at this point. The lady intereviewed me kept telling me that she only responsible for the interview and she will have no information on the timeline
Wonder where CACI is in the whole mix?