CLEARANCE DELAYS

During the last 28 months (i.e., since the beginning of FY 2000):

1. There were 136 matters in which clearance was contested.

• In other words, there were 136 matters in which both agencies filed for clearance.
• On average, these contested matters took 17.8 business days, or approximately three and a half weeks, to resolve.
• The industry allocations contained in the proposed agreement would have resolved more than 90 percent of these matters within 2 business days.

2. In another 164 matters, clearance took more than one week to resolve, although no formal clearance dispute occurred.

• In other words, there were 164 instances in which one agency's clearance request went uncontested by the other agency, but the matter still took more than a week to resolve. In many instances, this delay was imposed because an agency sat on the other agency's clearance request while deciding whether to contest it.
• On average, these uncontested matters took 12.8 business days, or approximately two and a half weeks, to resolve.
• The industry allocations contained in the proposed agreement would have resolved approximately 80 percent of these matters within 2 business days.

3. On average, these 300 matters - 24 percent of all matters for which clearance requests were filed - imposed delays of three weeks.

• Cumulatively, these investigations were delayed by 4,521 business days, or more than 17 years, because agencies disputed matters or sat on clearance requests while deciding whether to dispute them.

4. On average, almost 4 matters per month were delayed for longer than 2 weeks.

• Thus, 98 matters (almost one-third of these 300 instances) took 11 or more business days to resolve.

5. On average, more than 2 matters per month were delayed for longer than 3 weeks.

• Thus, 62 matters (20 percent of these 300 instances) took more than 15 business days to resolve.