Security officials periodically surveil public databases to monitor criminally charged people or unexpectedly incur a massive debt. Individuals with national security clearance are often the most carefully scrutinized. This process is known as vetting.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) recently announced that all federal employees will undergo a process known as continuous vetting (CV). This blog explains continuous vetting and why it is so important for the approved security clearance for current federal officials.
What are Background and Security Clearance Investigations?
Background investigations evaluate a potential applicant’s personal, professional, and criminal history to assess their behavioral and personal integrity. They are conducted to ensure that no historical incidents would hinder the applicant’s competency for the job.
Background investigations are mainly used to screen individuals for positions of trust since the latter requires a higher level of integrity and positive psychological adjustment. Examples of such positions are private security, law enforcement, and positions requiring government-issued security clearances. Moreover, the appointment of a civilian to a position in the Federal Government is strictly subject to background investigations.
Security clearance investigations conducted by the Department of Defense ensure that an individual is eligible for access to national security information authorized by the Federal Government.
Both background evaluations and security checks focus on conduct and character, emphasizing pertinent areas such as the individual’s trustworthiness, honesty, credit history, reliability, criminal record, and emotional stability.
What is Continuous Vetting?
Continuous vetting refers to the federal government frequently revising a cleared individual’s background to confirm that they comply with the security clearance requirements and can maintain their positions of trust.
Rather than being vetted once every few months or once a year in a process known as periodic reinvestigations, continuous vetting includes routine monitoring of federal workers.
Why is Continuous Vetting Important?
Continuous vetting is already being conducted at national security agencies and is also being applied to federal employees whose jobs require security clearance.
Continuous vetting helps the US Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) prevent personnel security situations from becoming more significant, more severe issues of concern. Moreover, continuous vetting can help identify potential red flags earlier and allow federal agencies to support workers with difficulties before the problem escalates.
In addition, continuous vetting will help lessen the pressure of follow-up investigations on security clearance procedures, especially the many pending background checks necessary for federal job candidates to begin working at new jobs.
What Does it Involve?
Continuous vetting involves automated checks of an individual’s criminal and terrorism records, financial databases, credit histories, and public files during their eligibility period.
When the DCSA is alerted of a potential security threat, it establishes whether the danger is valid before conducting further investigations. DCSA agents and juries then collect relevant data and facts to determine clearance.
Once sufficient information is available, federal officials can mitigate potential security threats by either working with the respective individual to settle the possible issues or, in more dire scenarios, suspending or revoking their security clearances.
Continuous Vetting for Non-Sensitive Public Trust Positions: Information in the Official Memo
Addressing federal agency heads, Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja stated that she hopes the new continuous vetting process will be applied to all federal workers in non-sensitive public trust positions by the end of the economic year 2024. Kiran Ahuja works with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) to ensure federal background checks for existing and future federal employees.
According to the official memo, the DCSA introduced a continuous vetting trial in June 2023 for individuals working in non-sensitive public trust positions; full implementation is aimed to start in the fiscal year 2024, as mentioned. In the meantime, federal agencies must follow the periodic reinvestigation process per the existing policy to ensure they meet regulatory requirements and prevent unforeseen delays in the movement of applicants and employees.
Furthermore, the switch to continuous vetting will apply to federal workers in the excepted service, federal contractors, and Defense Department non-appropriated fund employees. The memo states: “Agencies should handle issue resolution in response to CV alerts much the same way derogatory information discovered during a periodic reinvestigation is handled today. Any result from a continuous vetting alert that meets the requirement for expansion in Appendix I of the Federal Personnel Vetting Investigative Standards . . . will require the agency to request their [investigative service provider] to conduct the required investigatory actions. The agency will review the investigative results and determine suitability under Title 5.”
Final Words
The government is swiftly moving towards continuous vetting and continuous evaluation and hopes to implement it completely by September 2024. However, this doesn’t mean the five-year and 10-year process of getting a security clearance will change. Federal employees will still need to renew their security clearances like before; continuous vetting only ensures that problems within the clearance system are spotted early.
So, instead of the United States government finding a problem with a security clearance at the beginning of five years, continuous vetting will ensure that frequent background checks on specific databases such as public records and court records will reveal and mitigate a potential threat early on.