The case of George Dittman, a former federal agent that pleaded guilty to falsifying the background check information of a federal employee, raises the question of whether or not any government agency should be conducting in-house background checks.

Dittman, an agent for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, was responsible for conducting background checks for federal agencies and contractors to determine whether or not they qualified for security clearance. This is a scary thought considering the heightened level of security the country has been in since 9/11/01.

Relying on state and federal employees to conduct background checks is not as reliable as outsourcing to a company that specializes in background investigations and has no ties to the agency or company it is working for. Background check firms are objective and use procedures and technology that reduce human errors and deceptions.

The Office of Personnel Management and other federal and state agencies are better off outsourcing  previous employment verifications, hands-on county criminal searches, federal and state criminal searches, international criminal searches, license and degree verifications, and all the other investigations rather than depending on the ‘interview’ process and what one perceives and reports to be a good or bad recommendation.

The federal government may believe that hiring their own employees to perform background checks that are intended to protect our country is more reliable than looking to the outside; however, this case should represent the possibility that there are thousands of unqualified - and possibly unsafe - people working in high security government facilities.

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