How Sending Security Clearance Checks to Defense Will Affect the Workforce

Now that President Trump has signed a long-awaited executive order authorizing the transfer of the National Background Investigations Bureau from the Office of Personnel Management to the Defense Department, what does that mean for OPM? In short, the details are not clear yet. The executive order calls for the transfer of roughly 2,000 employees at OPM’s National Background Investigations Bureau to the Defense Department under the Defense Security Service, now renamed the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. But that new agency has until June 24 to become the “primary entity” to conduct background investigations, and it is not slated to handle all clearance checks until September.