ee ae United States Senate January 31,2019 The Honorable Mick Mulvaney Acting White House Chief of Staff The White House Washington, DC 20503 The Honorable Margaret Weichert Deputy Director of the Office of Management & Budget, ‘Acting Director, Office of Personnel Management Chair, Performance Accountability Council The White House Washington, DC 20503 ‘The Honorable Daniel Coats Director of National Intelligence Washington, DC 20511 The Honorable Joseph Kernan Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence 5000 Defense Pentagon Washington, DC 20301-5000 Dear Mr. Mulvaney, Ms. Weichert, Mr. Coats, and Mr. Keman: Lite you to reiterate my March 13, 2018, and September 25, 2018, letters to then-chief of staff John F. Kelly, calling for urgent and aggressive implementation of reforms to the ‘government's antiquated process for ensuring we have a trusted government and contract workforce. The current vetting process for security clearances and positions of trust is too complicated, takes too long, costs too much, and fails to capitalize on modern technology and processes, We are taking too many security risks and losing talented people who are not willing to endure a years-long process. Our current system is broken and needs a revolution. In order to achieve our shared objectives, we must avoid politicizing and delaying reform efforts. We must ‘act now, especially amidst allegations of inappropriate granting and revoking of clearances and anxieties caused by the government shutdown. A new vetting paradigm should be built on a few basic principles, delineated in a bill I introduced last year and am reintroducing in the 116" Congress, S. 3724, Modernizing the Trusted Workforce for the 21st Century Act of 2018.‘© Accountability: requiring plans for reducing the background investigation inventory to a steady state of roughly 200,000 from its high point of 725,000 in April 2018; consolidating the National Background Investigation Bureau (NBIB) in the Department of Defense; and maintaining transparency in the costs of background investigations; and ensuring reciprocity. Reform: rethinking the current suite of investigative methods; adopting consistent and clear policy for interim clearances, uniform treatment of government and contract personnel, and use of automated records checks; setting bold design goals to process applications for SECRET clearances in 30 days and TOP SECRET clearances in 90 days; and ensuring prompt reciprocity. © Oversight: codifying the roles and responsibilities of the DNI as the government's Security Executive Agent in statute, © Innovation: employing a process that reflects current threats, a mobile workforce, and modem technologies; reduces the complexity of a five-tier system; enables sharing of derogatory information between and among government agencies and contractors; and reexamines which positions even need a clearance. ‘The good news is that I believe the executive branch is contemplating many of these reforms, An executive order to consolidate NBIB at the Department of Defense has been under consideration for many months. The Performance Accountability Council is poised to implement a Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative with a comprehensive policy and process framework, but that first requires White House endorsement. urge you to act swiftly and aggressively to push forward these much needed reforms. stand ready to help provide legislative and oversight leadership an effective, efficient, accountable, and fair process to ensure we have a trusted workforce. Sincerely, Mk 8 Mowery Mark R. Warner ‘Vice Chairman