GAO on Security Clearances, NRC on Safeguards Info
Processing of applications for security clearances by the Department of Defense continues to fall far behind official targets for improvement, according to the Government Accountability Office.
“Our independent analysis of timeliness data showed that industry personnel contracted to work for the federal government waited more than one year on average to receive top secret clearances,” a new GAO study said.
Among other things, the latest study provides a useful snapshot of the security clearance apparatus. It reports, for example, that approximately 2.5 million persons hold security clearances authorized by the Department of Defense.
See “DOD Personnel Clearances: Additional OMB Actions Are Needed to Improve the Security Clearance Process” (pdf) [GAO-06-1070], September 2006.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing a new rule on protection of “Safeguards Information” (SGI).
“SGI is a special category of sensitive unclassified information to be protected from unauthorized disclosure under Section 147 of the [Atomic Energy Act].”
“Although SGI is considered to be sensitive unclassified information, it is handled and protected more like Classified National Security Information than like other sensitive unclassified information (e.g., privacy and proprietary information).” Access to SGI, for example, requires a validated “need to know.”
The proposed NRC rule, issued for public comment, was published in the Federal Register today.
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.