Security Clearance Modernization, and More Hearings
The Department of Defense denied security clearances to 8,065 individuals in 2008, according to a recent congressional hearing volume. “These numbers represent a small percentage of the total number of security clearance investigations. The vast majority of investigations are adjudicated favorably.” See “Security Clearance Reform: Moving Forward on Modernization,” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, September 15, 2009 (published April 2010). (Update: The statistics on clearance denials are given on page 92 of the PDF version of the hearing.)
Among other recently published congressional hearing volumes on national security topics are these:
“An Uneasy Relationship: U.S. Reliance on Private Security Firms in Overseas Operations” (pdf), Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, February 27, 2008 (published March 2010).
“Reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act: Ensuring Liberty,” Senate Judiciary Committee, September 23, 2009 (published April 2010).
“A Strategic and Economic Review of Aerospace Exports” (pdf), House Foreign Affairs Committee, December 9, 2009 (published April 2010).
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.