Has anyone contacted a US senator office to help speed up say, the adjudication process. I know someone who did, seemed to work. But can see it backfiring as well.
It’s not likely to backfire. Contact your representative and both senators. They will not be able to do much. They’re not in a position to push anything through. But, you can get a better status, easier, than through most other avenues.
I think that most of the time, any instance where it looks like the contact resulted in movement is just a coincidence. Think about it . . . They don’t get contacted until you have been waiting for a while and the longer you wait, the more likely your case advances. They can be helpful for the few people who get stuck somewhere in the process.
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I always advise waiting 24 months minimum. Ask the FSO what normal timelines are and if you are exceeding that. If you have no extensive foreign contacts, travel or crime…or drugs…then I think it is fair to ask. But like Ed said (welcome back Ed, always good seeing you post) it may just be the proverbial wack on side of TV set that seems to coincide with better picture. I’m dating myself. I don’t think anyone wacks TVs anymore. Just me?
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24 months seems like a crazy long time to be waiting, especially if you are not IC or a 3 Letter. I knew a couple years ago this was maybe more acceptable but with both the Executive branch and Congress demanding reasonable processing times and OPM/DoDCAF promising and reporting on their improvements, I wouldn’t accept that at all.
I wouldn’t accept that at all.
And what would you do about it?
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“Wouldn’t accept that at all” meaning exactly what?
You show up, pretend you are cleared and were offered a position? Until they say “cleared” you do not have ability to perform the function they want you to perform…no log on…etc. Keep in mind some vetting rolls slow…because there is a significant concern getting reviewed.
Wouldn’t accept it as in start the escalation process. Submit CSRs, priority upgrade requests, congressional inquiries, etc or just moving on. I’ve been cleared for many years. You’re not obligated to just sit around while your file has likely been shoved into some bottomless unmonitored pile. There’s a reason why its become routine for Congressional reps to step in the clearance process and mainly why you see pressure from both sides of the aisle to fix it. 2 years waiting for any job is unreasonable and a main reason why building a cleared workforce is so hard in the first place. Not only that but its incredibly wasteful for a contractor with say a 6 figure salary to draw government money for a year basically twiddling their thumbs. Its wasteful for everybody involved.
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Yeah we all kind of have 30 some years living that life. As for “not obligated to sit around,” disagree. We absolutely are. Yes there are limited steps to legit follow up on clearance processes, but for those working Personnel security with our fingers on the pulse who know processing times…24 months is normal with some government clients and nothing out of the ordinary at all. Pushing for political inquiries does not speed processing up. It can tell you “yes, you are in process.” The vast majority of the time it results in that answer. Rarely, they find a stalled package not being adequately tracked and get it moving. They aren’t doing that for housekeeper, grasscutter, or cleared culinary workers (had 350 of them TS Poly). The timeline is the timeline and just as I predicted hiring hundreds of investigators merely pushed the clog to adjudication.
Moving too fast to bless a package as “cleared” increases risk to national security. Going slow doesn’t eliminate that risk either.
I kept a good eye on what I had in process, and I pushed at accepted intervals to find out their status. You can quickly burn bridges in the clearance division community, and Lord knows I burned a few. From there I elevate to government security technical chain. They have more access, get better answers, less run around. They too have accepted intervals where it is appropriate to ask status. They too can burn bridges, and you don’t want that. The entire system flows at the speed of the choke points. It previously was investigations. Now it is processing and adjudication.
What is your hurry? There are priority cases and non-priority cases in this process. Senators have better work to do, especially right now, than deal with the speed one applicant’s security process.
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I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I definitely won’t sit around waiting for over a year on any job and Congress seems to agree because their recent NDAA mentions the unacceptable waiting times and how it bogs down the community as a whole. They dictate a laundry list of improvements that need to be made to the process including providing a portal for the user to be able to check their own status and not just the draconian eligibility pending mess in place now.
A reasonable processing time shouldn’t mean that the process becomes less secure either. Not that the current process as-is is fool proof to begin with.
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Would anyone on this chain be willing to offer some contact info? I have a question to ask that I don’t want to ask on the public forum.
And what exactly are you believing your passion accomplishes?
I’m not saying I appreciate or like the timelines. I’m merely living it and realize when filling my gas tank the gallons per minute limit the time to fill my tank. I can drive off, not sit and wait, call my Congress person…but sooner or later I wait until I’m cleared. Period. If I want gas…I wait for the tank to fill up.
I’ve been cleared since 82, actively worked Industrial security for 16 years. I can’t count the times we were told “this new technology…this new system…this new approach” is going to speed up the process. Just wait till end of summer/spring/winter…next year…in 5 years…I’m still waiting.
Clearances move at the speed of bureaucracy. Some of it warranted, some is wasted time. But 18 to 24 months is standard for a TS SCI with poly. Period. You can complain about it all you want. You aren’t speeding it up by filing complaints. Or demanding congress drop what it’s doing, and track down your paperwork. And then Adjudication staff gets bogged down, dropping what they are doing to find your package and in a nice way tell Congress it is on track and being actively worked. That slows the system down, hence why it burns bridges no matter how frustrating that is for the applicant, you, me the company wanting cleared billable hours, or the government client needing a slot filled.
That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.
But yeah…we agree to disagree. Post again when you fix this. I’ll wait. Just like you.
Yep, no more, no less. It takes as long as it takes.
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My passion? This is not what I’m passionate about.
But its clear that both the White House and Capitol Hill have had enough with sluggishness of this process. This is their words, not mine:
2020 NDAA
*“…despite sustained efforts by Congress and the executive branch, an UNACCEPTABLE backlog in processing and adjudicating security clearances persists, both within elements of the intelligence community and in other departments of the Federal Government, some processing times exceeding a year or even more; the protracted clearance timetable threatens the ability of elements of the intelligence community to hire and retain highly qualified individuals, and thus to fulfill the missions of such elements; the prospect of a lengthy clearance process deters some such individuals from seeking employment with the intelligence community in the first place, and, when faced with a long wait time, those with conditional offers of employment may opt to discontinue the security clearance process and pursue different opportunities; now more than ever, therefore, the broken security clearance process badly needs fundamental reform,” the NDAA states.
You can continue to be afraid of poking some mythological bear and continue pretending that better things aren’t possible and that people shouldn’t want or even demand better from our government but nobody else is obligated to stand idly by. Also let me be clear that I’m not crapping on our people involved in any portion of the clearance process. They like most other government institutions I’ve worked for are demanded to do more with less on the regular.
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You either miss my points repeatedly or I am unable to state in more clear terms.
None of us are happy with reality. We all want it to be faster and more efficient while remaining as secure as possible.
What exactly are you proposing we do differently? You keep saying you “won’t stand for this.” What does that mean? What are you doing? Tell us how you improved timelines. I’ll wait. I’m pretty good at it. Lots of practice. I just don’t understand what point you are trying to make. We all understand they take too long. So does the government, wash, wash, rinse, repeat. I’ve waited since 1989 to visually experience an acceptable time to clear. Beginning to think…it isnt going to happen.
Poking the bear at clearance division for my support contractors merely stops progress and I lose access to solid helpful resource. That’s like going to the store and cursing the cashier, throwing money at them because I don’t like prices. I need shop there…I cant go elsewhere for clearances…torquing off the worker bees or their bosses doesnt end with improvement to the process.
Agree to disagree, no one can claim to have the foolproof answer.