Nearly 1M not on payroll have security clearances
http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/nearly-1m-not-payroll-have-security-clearances
Nearly 1M not on payroll have security clearances
By Joe Davidson
The Washington Post
© September 22, 2014
WASHINGTON
When the Government Accountability Office was looking at security clearance issues, it found a curious situation among Defense Department agencies: Some have more people eligible for clearances than they have employees.
In fact, almost a million contractors are in the Pentagon's system but are not on the payroll, according to the department.
This "suggests that DOD's clearance eligibility totals may be inaccurate,"the GAO said in its typically understated way. "Specifically, GAO found that the number of eligible employees exceeded the total number of employees in five DOD components."
As the GAO report added, inaccurate data "hampers DOD's ability to reduce its number of clearance holders to minimize risk and reduce costs to the government."