The Defence Vetting Agency carries out national security checks on Government employees, employees of Government contractors and others, to allow them to be employed in jobs involving access to protectively marked information and materials, and to have access to sensitive facilities. The Agency has recently completed an ambitious collocation and modernisation programme designed to make it more responsive to its customers. It is now well placed to move towards carrying out security clearances more quickly, without any loss of quality. The Agency has been set the following Key Targets for Financial Year 2003–04.
Quality
Key Target 1: Through external validation, achieve at least a 95 per cent. success rating with specially selected cases, and achieve zero Serious Errors that should have been identified at the time of vetting.
Key Target 2: Address the diversity imbalance in the Agency and by 2004 achieve:
| a. | Women (Band D & above) | 28% |
| b. | Women (FIOs) | 25% |
| c. | Ethnic Minorities (FIOs) | 3.3% |
| d. | Disabled (Band D and FIOs) | 3% |
| (FIOs = Field Investigation Officers) | ||
Timeliness
Key Target 3: To complete routine cases:
Key Target 4: To complete priority cases:
(volume to be no more than 10 per cent. of total requests per month)
Key Target 5: To achieve average completion times.
Efficiency
Key Target 6: To reduce the FY 2002–03 Unit Cost of Output by 2 per cent.
I have arranged for advance copies of the Corporate Plan to be placed in the Libraries of the Houses.