A brief look at the latest happenings in Congress this week
The Department of Housing and Urban Development hired 1,000 new employees in 2014. The new workers are helping the agency reverse a downward trend around morale.
For the past six months, the Director of National Intelligence has been trying to determine whether the government should do Google searches on people who hold security clearances.
An Office of Personnel Management official said Tuesday that agency officials decided not to renew USIS' background investigations and support contracts.
The Enhanced Security Clearance Act of 2013 requires the Office of Personnel Management to implement an enhanced security clearance system. Under the system, every security clearance gets two random audits over a five-year time period.
About 83,000 Defense Department employees and contractors, who held or were determined eligible for a security clearance, owed more than $730 million in unpaid taxes as of June 2012, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Per GAO's recommendations, the Office of Personnel Management, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DoD are now working to include tax-compliance checks to enhance security clearance processes.
The Office of Management and Budget will collect spending and budget information from agencies to ramp up personnel security. This management priority accompanied other requests in a memo released Friday, which also included agency's benchmarking and providing customer service data.
Last week, President Obama signed the annual authorization bill for the U.S. Intelligence Community, making several changes to the way federal agencies and contractors deal with classified information and IT systems. Several of the provisions appear to be a reaction to the security clearance issues raised by the Edward Snowden case and by the Navy Yard shooting. Pamela Walker is senior director for homeland security at the Information Technology Alliance for Public Sector. She's been analyzing the final bill, and joined In Depth with guest host Jared Serbu to talk about some of the provisions.
Two congressional leaders want to know whether USIS' history was considered when awarding a $190 million Homeland Security Department contract.
Evan Lesser, co-founder and managing director of ClearanceJobs.com, will give his take on the State of the Union's impact on federal hiring in 2014. February 7, 2014 (Encore presentation February 14, 2014)
OMB is set to begin next week a 120-day review of three broad areas around security clearances. DoD and ODNI are pursuing initiatives to create a continuous evaluation process for employees with secret and top secret approvals. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members say recent events show the process is broken.
Five senators introduce bipartisan bill aimed at enhancing how the Office of Personnel Management handles the clearances of federal employees and contractors to access classified information. If enacted, the legislation would require OPM conduct random, automated reviews twice every five years of public records and databases for information about individuals with security clearances.
DoD still is working to implement dozens of recommendations that followed the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. The Pentagon wants to create a system that notifies security managers about potential problems with clearance holders ahead of time.
On the In Depth show blog, you can listen to the interviews, find more information about the guests on the show each day and links to additional resources.
New security measures, including a new polygraph question, will help avoid leaks from intelligence employees, announced James Clapper, director of National Intelligence. Lawyer John Mahoney analyzes the legal responsibilities between agencies and federal employees.