I’m approaching or around 60 days past the due for PR, so I think it’s not completely catastrophic, but will need an employer who’s willing to get right on it, and I worry that some won’t be willing to. My last company has agreed to do it, assuming that I’m rehired at least, but that’s not a guarantee.
That is because we have Agencies that don’t want to accept other Agency’s adjudication, are more strict with adjudication, or are more strict about the periodic reinvestigation timelines.
There was a law passed in the 1990s that all Agencies are supposed to accept each other’s clearances - it still doesn’t happen like it should.
Perhaps we should have a true central adjudication agency, the “CAA” who could issue levels of adjudication in addition to levels of access.
You could have the TS general up to law enforcement access only or TS/SCI Q DOE/DOD w/o poly Engineer for example.
That could work for clearances because all agencies have the same 13 rules applied to each investigation. For suitability/public trust, not so much, because different agencies stress certain events over others (e.g. DEA would probably be more strict against drug use than say, the Department of Education). Just my 2 cents.
They all use the same 13 adjudicative guidelines - and you are right - different agencies are more strict about certain areas than others from general appearances.