“The Administration has taken significant steps to improve the process by which the Federal Government grants individuals access to classified information,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a recent report (pdf) on security clearances.
“The average time it takes today to complete the security clearance process has been reduced by 18 days, or 6 percent.”
That is, instead of an FY 2005 average of 297 days to get a security clearance, the average wait in the first quarter of FY 2006 dropped to 279 days.
The proposed goal for December 2006 is 134 days.
See “Report on The Status of Executive Branch Efforts to Improve the Security Clearance Process,” Office of Management and Budget, February 2006.
The OMB report was first reported by Rati Bishnoi in Inside the Pentagon on July 6, 2006.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.
America’s affordability problem is bigger than home prices and rents. The best housing policies make it easier to build homes, and recognize how housing connects to other domains.
America’s affordability problem, for instance, is bigger than home prices and rents. How we build affects household costs like insurance and utilities.
As humans expand our geographic reach, encroach on untouched natural territories, and interact more with animal populations, we will encounter novel zoonotic diseases that threaten the human body. The sooner we act to address these risks, the better.