Reblogged: Nat'l Security and Bureaucracy Callin' home the pigs

[As security clearance] applications continue to pile up, government contractors are concerned that the growing value of already-cleared job applicants will make hiring burdensome.

"When you have an event like this occur, it creates a psychological impression that [the] stock [of already-cleared job applicants] is more valuable," said Richard Piske, vice president and general manager of Kelly FedSecure, which recruits people with varying levels of security clearance. Piske said in some instances, applicants' belief that their value has spiked makes them "very difficult to negotiate with."

Reminds me of the Project Manager (PM) certification bonanza that hit the Information Technology (IT) industry a few years back. With liability issues revolving around the Great Y2K Scare, companies used project management certification to "certify" they took "every reasonable effort" to ensure business continuity across that dreaded second as the odometer rolled from the end of one millennium to the beginning of the next. To this day, IT project managers with a piece of paper still think they call the shots, but are generally completely useless when it comes to actually managing a project.

IT projects consequently take longer and cost more. Unless the IT techie simply ignores PM standards and pretends the project is merely a customer request and can be handled from within the department. More often than not, the "customer" on these requests is strangely the same person making the change, and signing off the approval.

At the Department of Homeland Security, not only are we going to start hearing the call of Woooooooooo, Pig! Sooie! much more often, as "managerial" costs increase on both sides of the feed trough, but national security may be compromised as contractors try to take shortcuts and the government starts "fast tracking" security clearances.

In this context, I have to ask: isn't "Security Clearance" an oxymoron?

Read more here.

Credit: OutsideTheBeltway