AIA’s Eric Fanning: Standardized Application, Adjudication System Could Help Address Clearance Backlog

Eric Fanning, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, has said there are four ways the federal government should adopt to address the security clearance backlog and one of those is to implement a “uniform digital application record.”

Fanning wrote in a Defense One article published Tuesday that the application record should be “updated continuously and securely stored across agencies.”

“Once cleared, rather than requiring multiple, repetitive background investigations during a person’s career, a more efficient method would be to use monitoring tools that look at an individual’s risk profile, habits and activities to produce a dynamic, ongoing assessment – or one investigation,” he noted.

He called on agencies to come up with a standardized adjudication process that can be implemented across the government and noted that security clearances should be recognized across agencies if employees transfer to another department.

Fanning cited how the bill, Modernizing the Trusted Workforce for the 21st Century Act of 2018, could help facilitate the implementation of the four approaches to address the clearance backlog.