Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable

Return civilian security clearance investigations from DCSA to OPM

Not started

107 4. Department of Defense

“In 2019, following the catastrophic 2015 data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) accepted transfer of the responsibility to conduct security clearance and suitability investigations for 95 percent of the U.S. government's civilian workforce. … This function should be returned to OPM except for military security clearance investigations.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Security clearance and suitability investigations for the federal civilian workforce have not been returned to OPM. DCSA remains the investigative service provider — it appears 29 times in the Federal Register since 2025-01-20, all as the sponsor of its own information collections, and the FY2026 NDAA legislates on top of it rather than against it: sec. 6310 reforms inactive security clearances, sec. 1626 requires a review of extending inactive clearances, and sec. 7530 addresses continuous vetting. OPM's own window activity is on suitability and fitness *rules* (proposed 2025-06-03 and 2025-07-03, final 2026-06-30) and suitability action appeals, not on taking back the investigative function. Searched: the Federal Register full-text API for "Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency" and for background-investigation transfer notices since 2025-01-20; the FY2026 NDAA; the bills Corpus.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The transfer runs the other way from the Quote: the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency still runs background investigations for most of the civilian workforce, and both the executive and Congress spent the window improving that arrangement rather than unwinding it.

This item sits in the page 105–107 defense intelligence cluster (#182, #183, #184, #185, #186, #187, #188). One negative search covered the whole cluster: the FY2026 NDAA titles XV and LXV, the Federal Register full-text search, and bills in Congress from congress.gov.

  • Unified Agenda sweep, 2026-09-01. The Department of War’s full 2026 Unified Agenda was read on reginfo.gov (the agency’s 111 active entries across the Air Force, Army, Navy, the Corps of Engineers, Health Affairs, the DFARS council and OSD), not the abbreviated version the Federal Register prints. Nothing in it moves the background-investigation mission from DCSA to OPM, and OPM’s own agenda would be the other half of such a rulemaking. Two entries sit in the subject area and neither names this ask’s object: RIN 0790-AL52, National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM); Second Amendment, Final Rule Stage (final action projected 07/2026; proposed rule published 2023-12-13 at 88 FR 86288), which touches “eligibility determinations for personnel security clearance processes” for cleared contractors under the NISP; and RIN 0790-AL93, DoD Investigative and Adjudicative Guidance for Issuing the Common Access Card (CAC), Final Rule Stage (final action projected 07/2026), which removes the CAC vetting regulation. Both keep the function inside the Department, which is the opposite of what the Quote asks. https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=0790-AL52 https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=0790-AL93
Action
transfer
Object
civilian security clearance and suitability investigations (DCSA to OPM)
ID
188