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Position Sensitivity

Certain positions within the Department of Interior entail sensitive duties including access to classified information. Certain actions (e.g., misconduct) or even inaction on the part of an employee in a designated sensitive position could directly compromise national security. In the interest of national security, managers and supervisors must exercise sound judgment in selecting individuals to fill sensitive positions.

There are four sensitivity levels:

1.  Nonsensitive;

2.  Noncritical-sensitive;

3.  Critical-sensitive; and

4.  Special-sensitive.

Position senstivity determines the type of security investigation required before individuals can be assigned to sensitive positions and granted the applicable clearance (e.g., SECRET, TOP SECRET). Security investigations for sensitive positions can take a long time to complete and are quite costly. For these reasons, and to ensure the most effective and efficiency security program, only positions which truly meet the criteria of sensitive should be designated as such.

Normally, the authority to designate position sensitivity is delegated from senior executives to lower level managers and supervisors. It is their responsibility to ensure that sensitivity designations of positions under their authority are correct and consistent with security access requirements.

The sensitivity designation is annotated on the position description.