In the aftermath of 9/11, government, military and select companies in the private sector have stepped up their security management and employee background checks as precautions measures when pre-screening employees, personnel and affiliates.

Thorough employee background checks are now required for everyone, not simply for those who will come into contact with sensitive information or be assigned sensitive tasks. Each person's security clearance "case" must be assembled from various sources and, once a clearance is granted, various systems must be updated and appropriate personnel be notified. All in a fully-auditable solution.

This case management process is highly manual, high in rework and entirely unscalable without a process management infrastructure.

Business Objectives

• Speed up security clearance: It currently can take > 300 days to complete an individual's DoD security clearance
• Reduce costs: Security clearance investigative costs are projected to double in 2006 from 2003
• Get clearance processes started quickly: As of Fall 2004, there is a backlog of 500,000 security clearance cases at the DoD

Benefits of BPM

• Lower Costs While Building Scalability and Speed
  BPM effectively orchestrates manual activity in support of the process, expediting Work by making people 3 - 5 times more efficient and by introducing automation into the mix where appropriate
• Ease of Stakeholder Adoption
  People can participate using the common desktop tools they are already familiar with (i.e. Word, Excel, etc.)
• Real-time Agility
  Processes change regularly. BPM enables real-time updates that can be made without needing to write code
• Process Visibility
  Verification is assured and fully-auditable