The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is calling on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and urging her office to confront critical data shortfalls undermining the Federal personnel security clearance process.
“Addressing these personnel vetting-related recommendations is imperative to improving the government-wide personnel security clearance process,” the Federal watchdog wrote in its May 1 letter to Gabbard.
GAO pointed to ongoing problems within the Office of the DNI’s oversight, especially in managing reciprocity and using performance metrics. The watchdog says ODNI’s data tracking reciprocity decisions are unreliable, which hinders meaningful measurement of progress and performance.
In a 2024 survey, 22 of 31 federal agencies identified poor-quality and incomplete IT system data as the top challenge in processing reciprocal clearances. To address this, GAO recommended the DNI adopt best practices for validating agency-submitted data and implement a clear plan to ensure IT systems can fully support clearance reciprocity.
“By taking these actions, ODNI would likely improve reciprocity rates,” GAO wrote. “This will enable agencies to access personnel with needed skills more quickly and help those agencies achieve their missions.”
Improving the government-wide personnel security clearance process remains a priority, as the system has been on GAO’s High-Risk List for over six years due to persistent delays and inefficiencies. While earlier updates tracked whether agencies met clearance timeliness goals, GAO found that by 2023, ODNI no longer maintained reliable data to measure that performance.
Additionally, in its 2025 biennial report, GAO concluded that ODNI’s data on clearance processing was too flawed to assess how many executive branch agencies were meeting required timelines.
The Federal watchdog also informed Gabbard that it will continue to evaluate ODNI’s timeliness data and expects to release further findings on their progress this summer.