Wednesday, June 18, 2014

A strange definition of investigation

U.S. Investigative Services (USIS) investigates the loyalty and integrity of applicants for sensitive federal jobs. It doesn't look like they do a good job, the Snowden case being one of their investigations. One of their employees was able to review and clear 15,152 cases in a single month during fiscal 2013. That works out to about 1.5 cases per minute.

Worse than that is the agency's policy of “auto-release.” Here, they have developed software which 'completes' application reviews in thirty days; complete is enclosed in quotes because the investigation may or may not actually be complete. The agency defends auto-release as “a necessary fail-safe to eliminate workflow backlogs and move work along in deference to timeliness mandates”. I wish I could eliminate backlogs so easily.

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