After Embarrassing Hacks, Feds Roll Out New Government Agency

This one will take over background checks.

Cedric Hatto/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A new government agency is going to take over the process of performing background checks of existing and potential government employees. The news comes about six months after it was revealed that hackers had broken into the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computers and stolen the sensitive personal information of nearly 22 million past and current federal employees, a scandal that cost former OPM Director Katherine Archuleta her job.

“This is primarily about recognizing the evolving threats and national security importance of the background investigation systems and data,” Samuel J. Schumach, OPM’s press secretary, told the New York Times. “Utilizing what DOD can provide—a large and trained cybersecurity work force to protect against and respond to cyberintrusions, and a strong focus on national security—is the right step to take.”

The new agency will be called the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB), according to Federal New Radio, and it will take over the Federal Investigative Services, a bureau of the personnel agency that has been responsible for running most background checks. The Department of Defense will design and build the new agency’s information technology and cybersecurity systems, Federal News Radio reports, and will also operate the data storage and security of the system. The NBIB and its staff will still work within the Office of Personnel Management, but a presidential appointee will run it, notes Engadget. It’s unclear when the agency will get off the ground, but work on the project will begin this year.

The new agency is the result of a 90-day review of the government’s information security policies and practices that President Barack Obama ordered in July. The president will ask for an additional $95 million in his 2017 budget to pay for the new agency.

This is the second time Obama has addressed problems associated with the government’s background clearance process. After an IT contractor killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard office complex in September 2013, Obama called for a complete evaluation of the security screening procedures of contract employees. In March 2014, the administration announced it had accepted 13 recommendations of an interagency review, which included ongoing reviews of workers and contractors rather than sporadic checks, better access to state and local information for federal background checks, and consistent background requirements for federal employees and contractors.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was unimpressed, according to Federal Times. He said the new agency won’t solve problems inherent in the federal government’s human resources department.

“Protecting this information should be a core competency of OPM,” said Chaffetz, the chair of the House Oversight Committee. “[This announcement] seems aimed at only solving a perception problem rather than tackling the reforms needed to fix a broken security clearance process.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate