background check | The Contracting Education Academy

October 9, 2019 By cs

Background investigations move to their new home at the Pentagon

The Department of Defense formally became the lead agency for conducting background investigations for current and potential feds and contractors Oct. 1, fulfilling congressional and administration requirements that the Pentagon take charge of such investigations at the start of the 2020 fiscal year.

According to a Department of Defense official who spoke on background to reporters Oct. 1, the transfer consisted of approximately 2,900 federal employees from the Office of Personnel Management’s National Background Investigation Bureau to the DoD’s new Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which encompasses both background investigation duties and industrial and technological security.

“We’ve created what is arguably the single largest security-focused agency in the federal government,” the official said.

Employees of the background investigation agency moved from being Title 5 employees at OPM to Title 10 employees at DoD, a position that is effectively the same, according to the official, and only a handful of employees chose to take discontinued service retirement rather than move to DoD.

“Merging the components into one organization will allow us to execute our two core missions: personnel vetting and critical technology protection, underpinned by counterintelligence and training,’’ said Charles Phalen Jr., acting director of DCSA, in the news release on the merger.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/management/2019/10/01/background-investigations-move-to-their-new-home-at-the-pentagon

September 16, 2019 By cs

The future of continuous evaluation is just about here, and it has a different name

What started as pilot program for the Defense Department and other agencies in the intelligence community will soon become the key piece to the Trump administration’s overhaul of the suitability, credentialing and security clearance process.

The overhaul itself is called the Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative, and it’s the administration’s attempt to, at last, modernize a security clearance and vetting system that’s badly in need of an update.

The initiative itself will come in the form of several new policies and procedures, which are due sometime near the end of the year, defense and intelligence officials have said. Everything from the type of security clearances themselves to the standards used to investigate and adjudicate clearance holders will change.

And the continuous evaluation concept, the program DoD and others have used to monitor its cleared population and maintain trust with its employees and contractors, will also evolve.

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2019/09/the-future-of-continuous-evaluation-is-just-about-here-and-it-has-a-different-name/

December 20, 2018 By AMK

Pentagon to take over all security clearances in 9 months, officials say

The Defense Department and Office of Personnel Management expect to have merged two offices and moved 2,000 federal employees and a 600,000-case backlog of security clearance investigations nine months from now.

The new office will be established under the Defense Security Service by Oct. 1, 2019, Director for Defense Intelligence Garry Reid told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing last week on the security clearance backlog. The office will absorb the National Background Investigations Bureau, established in the wake of the 2015 OPM network breach.

Originally, NBIB was created to handle the majority of background investigations while the Defense Department built out secure infrastructure to maintain those operations, called the National Background Investigations Services system. As the backlog grew—hitting a peak of 725,000 this April—Congress ordered NBIB to transfer Defense investigations to DSS. Rather than split the work between two departments, the administration plans to move all clearance work to the Defense Department.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/12/pentagon-take-over-all-security-clearances-nine-months-officials-say/153509

July 20, 2018 By AMK

Defense Security Service is trying to overhaul the entire security clearance process

The Defense Security Service is preparing to take over all background investigations for civilian and defense agencies and doesn’t want to inherit stale and potentially broken processes, officials told Nextgov.

The Defense Department office is currently reviewing white papers obtained through an other transaction authority solicitation seeking innovative methods for conducting background checks of current and potential federal employees who need security clearances.

The project is not about the technology behind background investigations process but rather how to innovate the process itself—from when the SF-86 form is filled out to when the clearance decision is made by the agency—according to Tara Petersen, head of DSS Office of Acquisitions, and her deputy, Stephen Heath.

“We’re really looking broader at the process itself,” Petersen said. “We’re looking to prototype a process.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2018/07/defense-security-service-trying-overhaul-entire-security-clearance-process/149606/

February 29, 2016 By AMK

OPM seeks to tighten security of contractors conducting background checks

Contractors that conduct background investigations for the federal government will have to report information security incidents to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) within half an hour, are required to use smartcards as a second layer of security when logging on to agency networks, and must agree to let OPM inspect their systems at any time.

Those are new requirements OPM has written into draft contracting documents released last month that govern how the personal, often sensitive, information gleaned during background investigations should be stored on contractors’ computer systems.

The draft request for proposals is “intended to provide industry advanced notice of the pending solicitation as well as an opportunity to provide comments, feedback and recommendations that the government can consider prior to finalizing the solicitation,” OPM spokesman Sam Schumach told Nextgov in an email.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/02/contracting-docs-opm-tighten-it-security-background-investigation-companies/125741

What started as pilot program for the Defense Department and other agencies in the intelligence community will soon become the key piece to the Trump administration’s overhaul of the suitability, credentialing and security clearance process.

The Defense Department and Office of Personnel Management expect to have merged two offices and moved 2,000 federal employees and a 600,000-case backlog of security clearance investigations nine months from now.

The Defense Security Service is preparing to take over all background investigations for civilian and defense agencies and doesn’t want to inherit stale and potentially broken processes, officials told Nextgov.

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