Delay Adjudication

Hi, My TSC/poly application was submitted for adjudication in July 2022, as of today I haven’t heard anything. I reached out to the OPM via email and was told that my case is still being adjudicated and once cleared I will receive an email. Has anyone experienced this prolonged delay and any suggestions on what I can do to obtain current update about my status?

The adjudication phase is always the most opaque. A couple years back such delays were very common, but from what I’ve heard the backlogs have cleared out.

You say you reached out to OPM but I think they are out of the investigation business and I dont think they ever adjudicated.

Anyway, it has “only” been about four months and I can remember when cases lingered for over a year, especially for contractors. Can’t offer much in the way of encouragement here.

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Depending on the customer, I’ve seen 6-7 months lately, up to 18 months.

The reality is, you cannot do anything at this point to speed things up…
Patience is key, and you’ll get the good news when least expected.

@rocket, Thank you for the encouraging response.

@sbusquirrel, Thank you for your response, sorry I made a mistake saying I emailed OPM! The response actually came from OHR and my Case Manager.

@Rocket and anyone else. What is it that takes so long? I am retired submarines. I retired stayed away 24 months and started the reinvestigation in June 21. It was completed in January. I left that job so it caused a “loss of jurisdiction” with “no decision rendered” (so i was told). Now I am at a new command and thought I was eligible, however, they requested a “reinstatement of eligibility” and apparently it is in the "pending adjudication phase, it’s been 36 days as of right now. Thing is, I am being told I can’t be granted an Interim because they “have nothing to base it off of”. The other issue is they onboarded me with everyone including me thinking I was cleared. Now I am sitting around trying to keep busy and doing everything I can to help without helping. SUCKS> There has got to be a better way.

Like @sbusquirrel said, that adjudication process is opaque to us…
So I’ll only speculate:

  • Your case might end up in some sort of queue, for the adjudicators to pull from.
  • The backlog and time to process may be different for customers that do their own adjudications.
  • Your case might have a different priority, based on whether you are in the military, a civilian, a contractor, or if you are important enough to have your case expedited, or depending on the case complexity.
  • Your case might be missing some important info, and sent back to investigators to get that info.
  • I know that for investigations at least, some areas are more backlogged than others. I assume this could also be true for adjudications if it is not centralized.
  • Who know what kind of shadowy counter-intel process they run concurrently.

I’m just spitballing here…

6a. Some one in command is sitting on the required documents or just haven’t submitted the request. (this happens often)

This was definitely true for the first two months. But now it says “Pending Adjudication”