“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 bigger than a singular elimination of race and ethnicity questions. It could accelerate the second wave of widespread reductions to demographic data, leaving public health officials with even less information to deliver better health outcomes for all Americans.
Soft law was never meant to be a permanent solution. Treating it as one, and letting the sandcastle stand in for the skyscraper indefinitely, is how we end up with a decade of voluntary commitments and no enforceable accountability to show for it.
FAS has partnered with ICLEI USA to launch the CRI Local Advisory Council.
We sat down with Dr. Max Moritz and Chief Rob Hazard to discuss how communities use time, money, and data to reduce the risk that wildfires pose.