The move is the latest in a series of efforts to reduce the delay and duplication that has characterized these processes for many years, leading to frustratingly long waits for new hires. It is a problem that has dogged successive administrations, but it has become especially severe since the huge expansion of U.S. intelligence agencies and contractors following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"Everybody -- Congress, the administration, industry -- wants this to work," Clay Johnson, the deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told United Press International. "They want us to make these determinations faster."

The length of time it takes for the background investigation and security adjudication needed for a clearance to access classified information is the stuff of Beltway legend. It has led military and intelligence contractors in the Washington region to offer large bonuses to recruit and retain employees who already have them.

The length and cost of the process is "a huge burden, especially for small businesses," Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a trade group representing government contractors, told UPI. Soloway said companies would often find themselves waiting months to start work on a project, while their employees -- already hired and being paid -- underwent investigation by government gumshoes and then adjudication, when officials from the agency issuing the clearance weigh the data gathered and decide whether to grant it.

"It's disturbing that it has taken so long," Soloway said of the reform process, which dates back in its current iteration to the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. He added that Monday's executive order was "a welcome if overdue step" towards fixing a system that "pretty much everyone agrees is broken."

"The implementation is going to be critical," he said, adding that the Performance Accountability Council that the order establishes and Johnson will chair would need to "overcome institutionalized resistance" in security-conscious intelligence agencies. "It's a very sensitive area," he said, "It's a long slog."

Johnson defended the administration's progress. "Significant improvements have been made," he told UPI.

He said that in June 2005, when Bush signed the executive order implementing the first stage of the reforms the 2004 law called for, investigation and adjudication took an average of 160 days. That order told officials to reduce that to 60 days by December 2009.

"We are more than halfway there," Johnson said, adding the current average processing time was now 105 days.

Monday's order expands the reform process to include the suitability checks made on every new federal hire whether they need a clearance or not, and the issuance process for new biometric ID and computer access cards to all federal employees under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12.

The order mandates the creation of an "end to end" automated system "to manage and monitor cases and maintain relevant documentation" for all of these processes, and the "alignment" of policy so that "Each successively higher level of investigation and adjudication shall build upon, but not duplicate, the ones below it."

Johnson said the new streamlined process would also allow for "the use of information from commercial databases where appropriate."

Soloway said the key issues addressed by the order were interagency ones: common standards for investigations and adjudications and the reciprocal recognition of clearances.

"At the moment, you can have someone with a clearance from the Department of Justice, and it's not recognized by the FBI," he said, because each agency sets its own standards and recognizes only its own clearances.

"If you don't have common standards and reciprocity, you're re-inventing the wheel" at every stage, he said.

The order puts Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell in charge of developing "uniform and consistent policies and procedures (for) investigations and adjudications" across agencies and ensuring "reciprocal recognition of eligibility for access to classified information among the agencies, including acting as the final authority to arbitrate and resolve disputes."

"We in industry have long argued that there needed to be a single node of responsibility �� to drive this forward," said Soloway.

Johnson said McConnell would "drive the policy piece," while the job of the council he will chair was to "eliminate operational inconsistency."

He added the aim was not to impose complete uniformity. "If policies need to be different (in different agencies), they need to be different," he said.

But the new structure will force everyone to make a case for any exceptions and provide a forum in which binding decisions could be made about them.

The order specifically exempts the use of controversial lie-detector tests, which will continue to be required by some agencies and disparaged by others. "An agency may not establish additional investigative or adjudicative requirements �� other than requirements for the conduct of a polygraph examination consistent with law, directive, or regulation," it states.

Johnson said the reform process would also develop "more checks and balances" on the way decisions are made about which employees need clearances, to ensure that they are required only when really necessary.

Soloway said part of the problem is that the costs of getting clearances are not borne by the requiring agency. "If the U.S. Army decides that 100 people working on a program need Top Secret clearances �� the Defense Security Service (the Pentagon agency responsible for clearances) pays the bill."

That arrangement meant "agencies have less incentive" to be judicious in deciding who needed which clearances, he said.

He said one possible though controversial solution would be to "make the requiring component pay for the cost of getting the clearance."

"The problem some people have with that," he said, was that it made security a cost, creating incentives for a more lax attitude.

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