Security at OPM

I was a little surprised to see a GAO report on cyber in OPM reflect findings that add to the questions about much has improved after the Chinese stole all the personnel records for security clearances.

After losing 24 million personnel security records, you would think OPM would have gotten to fixing the types of problems that were noted.  They had two years to do it, and are only now getting around to issuing the kinds of contracts that are needed to support their IT infrastructure.  Then, we see that OPM still has an "acting director" which means no new person has been approved for the office.  George Nesterczuk, the nominee, ran afoul of the "resist" movement in Congress and withdrew after months of waiting.  The national security implications of this kind of nomination seem to not matter to some of the Congress, led by Mark Warner from Virginia.

Maybe Congress thinks things are under control at OPM, but these mistakes have cost the country hundreds of millions of man hours and dollars because of the delays in getting new clearances or in upgrading or updating others.  We are going to see these effects for a decade, but footdragging for political reasons may push it out even longer.