The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has begun to roll out its continuous vetting (CV) service for the Federal government’s non-sensitive public trust (NSPT) workforce.
According to the DCSA, the NSPT population includes individuals who hold non-national security roles but could pose a higher risk of damage to the integrity or efficiency of the service through misconduct – like the public safety and health services workforce.
DCSA had a soft launch of its CV service for the NSPT workforce in August, and according to DCSA Principal Deputy Assistant Director for Adjudication and Vetting Services Heather Green, a more scaled approach will begin on Oct. 1 with the goal of phasing out enrollments and reaching an additional one million Federal workers by the end of fiscal year 2025.
In October 2021, DCSA successfully enrolled nearly four million Federal employees who hold a security clearance in the CV process.
“We have over 3.8 million people enrolled in the continuous vetting program from our national security population,” Green told reporters on Sept. 5. “That covers seven data categories, agency specific information, and really has shown a lot of success with identifying information early and often and ensuring we mitigate those situations immediately.”
According to DCSA, CV is the ongoing review of any covered individual’s background to determine whether that individual continues to meet applicable requirements. CV “ensures a trusted workforce (TW) in near real time through automated record checks, time and event based investigative activity, and agency-specific information sharing,” the agency said.
Currently, employees undergo periodic investigations every five to 10 years.
DCSA’s CV service is a key part of the TW 2.0 initiative, which aims to overhaul the personnel clearance and vetting process.
“When we think about what we’re delivering, it’s that trusted workforce consisting of all the Federal employees, contractors, and the mission that they’re providing,” DCSA Assistant Director for Personnel Security Mark Livingston told reporters today. “And then think about the mobility – we’re improving transfer of trust and reciprocity, and those are all mission enablers, and that’s what we’re trying to do as we protect our national secrets.”
“To put it into scope or comparison, what 9/11 did to aviation safety and security and what COVID did to the workplace, trusted workforce is doing that to the national security workforce,” Livingston added. “It is just monumental. These are shifts in the tectonic plates that are just huge, new, and innovative.”
