DOD and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) generally rely on a personnel security clearance process that includes five stages: pre-investigation, investigation, adjudication, appeals and reinvestigation. In the pre-investigation stage, if a government agency determines that a position requires federal employees or contractor personnel to have access to classified information, the agency or contractor must submit the individuals’ personnel security questionnaire (the "application") for review by OPM.

During the investigation phase OPM or one of its contractors conducts an investigation of the employee using government-wide standards established under Executive Order 12968, set out in the Federal Register 40245 (Aug. 7, 1995). For initial and reinvestigations of confidential or secret clearances, investigations gather much of the required information electronically while for top secret clearances investigators must obtain additional information though time-consuming activities such as review of police and court records as well as background interviews. During the adjudication stage, relying on information in the investigative report, an adjudicator determines whether the applicant is eligible for access to classified information at the level requested. If the adjudicator determines the investigative report is "clean" (no potential security issues) they determine eligibility and forward the determination to the requesting agency. If the application has "issues" (e.g. information that might disqualify the individual such as foreign connections or drug/alcohol problems) it is sent to the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals for DOD agencies or the OPM’s Investigative Services Suitability Adjudications Branch for non-DOD agencies where a legal sufficiency review takes place and a written Statement of Reasons (SOR) is issued to the application enumerating the reasons for denial. The applicant then has 20 days to respond where the appeals stage begins if they choose to appeal. Finally in the reinvestigations stage the agencies maintain security clearance records for cleared personnel and track expiration dates and conducts reinvestigations according to applicable instructions.

{TAG_FORM_TITLE}