The US Government Fingerprinted Me for the 3rd Time in 2 Years Today. But Not for Breaking Any Laws...

I was fingerprinted by the US Government for the 3rd time in the last 2 years today. But not because I've broken any laws. And it isn't racial profiling (I'm a white dude, and there is no way I look dangerous). So why is the Government so interested in my digits?

I do agile software consulting work with a number of US Government agencies. You might think one agency would accept fingerprints collected by a different agency... and some may, but others don't. Doesn't that seem a bit crazy? Are the fingerprints done by one agency a year ago likely to be different than those taken at a different agency? Um... no.

Even more mind boggling, at some agencies they require you to re-do your fingerprints when you start on a new contract within the SAME AGENCY.

That's what happened to me today. Two years ago, I was fingerprinted for work I was doing at a large Government agency on "contract A." I'm about to start work on "contract B" with that same agency, and they required me to re-do my fingerprints.

Why should anyone care? Doing those prints required Government support and taxpayer dollars. That's why. But the costs to re-do my fingerprints are just a part of the issue. The fingerprints are now sent to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for processing and adjudication. So the Government will spend more money on additional steps in the process.

Now, that adjudication process might be warranted if the security requirements for the new contract were materially different than the prior contract. But they aren't. The work is very similar and the security classification is the same.

The problem is even worse when we look across Government agencies - most won't accept a security and background check if it was sponsored by a different agency. Even when the security classification is largely the same. And even though the same people do the background checks regardless of which agency sponsors the check. So if you are a Government contractor and you work at 3 or 4 different agencies, it is not uncommon for you to go through this process a few times each year. Even if the security classification is materially exactly the same for all of the work.

But how big a deal is this? How many Government contractors are there? Numbers vary, but estimates seem to be in the range of 3.7 million people.

I'm sure lots of people have very little sympathy for Government contractors. And if this situation were just an annoyance for folks like me, I wouldn't expect people to care. But there's a cost to the taxpayer here, and it goes beyond the obvious Government support time.

Who do you think pays for the contractor's time to re-do these fingerprints over and over? Ultimately, the Government does. Maybe not directly -- the Government might specifically state that the time required for fingerprinting is the contractor's responsibility. But there is no free lunch. Contractors charge the Government for this time by building it into labor rates. Every hour worked has to be paid for by someone. So in the end, the Government pays.

I know there are lots of smart people in our Government. So why does this happen? Am I the only person bothered by this? Ugh... maybe its just me.

But I hope not.

Making our country secure is critically important, and of course we have to go through useful security processes. But when we spend money on something repetitive, aren't we taking funds away from important law enforcement needs?

And how about this: can we really expect our Government to work as a cohesive unit to stop terrorism if they can't agree on cross-agency security standards that make sense?

I wish I had answers... but I don't. Hopefully someone in Government with the power to change things decides to get this done. I know how I'd do it... but that's a topic for another day.